Reunions can be a tough sell. They’re breeding grounds for awkward interactions, whether it’s trying to remember an old friend’s name, or scooting by ancient acquaintances with your eyes glued to the ground to snag a mini-corndog. A reunion film that posits itself as The Big Chill meets The Graduate, 3 Nights in the Desert is a thoroughly unpleasant homecoming of three friends getting the band back together, and reminds us of perhaps the darkest horror in nostalgic gatherings: what if everyone there sucks?
Gabriel Cowan’s film expresses itself in heavy-handed character dynamics, in which three bandmates from a decade ago now fit into precise reunion types. There’s the regular sellout, Barry (Vincent Piazza), who gave up drumming to excel at having responsibilities and wearing suits. Then there’s the friend at the other end of the sellout spectrum, the one who made it too big, Amber Tamblyn’s Anna. She’s a pop star (of what style, we’re not sure) who proves her fame within the film by brandishing a foreign magazine on which she was the cover. Bringing everyone together is the one who’s been on a streak of L-I-V-I-N’, Wes Bentley’s guitar-playing Travis, who hosts the event at his secluded desert shack. Unlike his friends, he still lives a more free-spirited, easy-going life, but bears a few scars from the past. You can tell this because he wears flannel, has a physical scar on his neck, and limps. (Alas, Bentley’s super-rad flame beard from “The Hunger Games” is only present in spirit.)
3 Nights in the Desert makes an awkward chore out of bringing together old friends. The three sit around a fire and laugh, sharing new stories of how they met that undoubtedly would have been covered back when they knew each other better. At the center of the conversation is a giant question mark about what exactly broke up the band, which is underlined and bolded during their many goofy tantrums. This nonetheless makes for a clumsy big reveal later on, after the movie has lost its graces many times over. Plopped on top of this, 3 Nights in the Desert teases the life-changing magic of a cave, because why not. Ominous moments are cooked up by a weird mystery that Travis projects onto the cave, but it becomes a seed of unease the script doesn’t plant.
Kudos to Adam Chanzit’s script, though, for not aping other reunion films by getting caught up in the whimsy of nostalgia and creating a sentimental route to getting the band together. However, the first-time writer’s idea to make his gathering different from others is to imbue creepier vibes throughout, making Bentley and Piazza’s manipulative characters the type of guys who listened to Weezer’s “Pinkerton” a few too many times, only taking away the narrative of a man trying to bed the women he deserves. Barry especially, who begins as our surrogate, becomes a sexually entitled piece of shit in the middle of the film when he attacks Anna; in the script’s lack of tact, it soon after rewards him with her. 3 Nights in the Desert grotesquely uses this darkness as its dramatic edge, but this representation isn’t wise enough to speak beyond the way the film offers sadistic heroes for the open-mic creepshows who are their true-life spinoffs. Barry and Travis’ flaws don’t make them challenging or tragic, but it does make them approximately zero percent sympathetic.
While the men are overcooked, Anna is undercooked, existing as a target for slut-shaming, not the fortified stance of a breathing character. It’s conveyed that she’s a female pop singer, has red hair, and that both men have eyes for her. But she’s too meager to provide the salvation this story needs in trying to endure this melodramatic assembly. Along with her co-stars, Tamblyn provides sporadic efforts to make it out of this horrid drama alive, but this reunion nonetheless proves a bad idea soon after it starts.
One thought on ““3 Nights in the Desert””
I thought Barry was pretty disgusting (3 Nights in the Desert). Has to strip naked to shit, has to jerk off several times daily, is a married tax lawyer. In other words, a complete douchebag. I would have been fine if he had bitten it. The other two were OK. I wished they had stayed together, or at least tried to.