6 Balloons Carries The Viewer Away With A Stark Look At Addiction

Comedic actors crossing over to the world of dramatic acting is a process that typically yields quite successful and frequently fascinating results. The likes of Steve Martin, Robin Williams, and Adam Sandler have all managed in the past to show off their chops as actors without even attempting to make jokes. Typically these performances occur years into a comedic actors career, but Abbi Jacobson and Dave Franco have both have decided to buck tradition and wade into such waters early on in their careers (hell, this is only the fourth live-action film appearance from Abbi Jacobson) by headlining the drama 6 Balloons, a bold move that results in a pair of memorably bleak performances.


Today is a big day for Katie (Abbi Jacobson). She's planning to throw a splashy surprise party for her boyfriend, an endeavor that requires the help of numerous people and a whole lot of preparation to put together. As the number of hours until the party starts begin to dwindle down, Katie and her parents begin to wonder where her brother, Seth (Dave Franco), is. Since she has to go get a cake anyway, Katie decides to go check on Seth, only to discover him in his apartment in a daze. Seth has been long struggling with drug addiction and now he's relapsed on today of all days. With Seth's young daughter in tow, Katie tries to drop Seth off at a cleansing center before the surprise party starts.

That turns out to be a mighty difficult task to pull off and now Katie & Seth are driving all around town trying to figure out how to handle this situation, with Katie willing to do anything to get back to the party. Following these two over the course of a single night proves to be a bleak affair, with writer/director Marja-Lewis Ryan (who makes her feature film writing and directing debut here) making it clear from the get-go that this will not be a movie whose depiction of drug addiction will have its edges sanded off. This applies to both Seth's behavior as well as how Katie becomes more of an enabler than a helper to her brother throughout the evening. This kind of desolate portrait of troubled adult siblings could become exploitatively gruesome in the wrong hands, but Marja-Lewis Ryan manages to handle this premise with remarkable care.

Best of all about the way she writes these characters and their conflicts is the subtly realized lived-in quality they carry. The notion of Seth being an addict is nothing new to Katie or her family, he's gone through the process of relapsing before and the fact that these characters have been down this path before with Seth prior to the movie itself starting is definitely felt by the viewer. On its own, this is a well-executed touch that makes the world Katie and Seth inhabit feel as lived-in as the real world, but it also feels fitting with the very nature of addiction itself. Addiction is something people struggle with their entire lives, not just in the span of a night, so it feels fitting that a movie like 6 Balloons would carry a subtly communicated quality that emphasizes how long Katie and her family have been trying to help Seth.

Also well-executed in the screenplay is the way 6 Balloons depicts the complicated relationship between Katie and Seth, especially in the way it depicts the two clearly having a sibling dynamic rich in sarcasm that demonstrates they do have interactions with one another beyond just when Seth is struggling with addiction. Smartly, elements like flashbacks to happier childhood days have been eschewed, instead the film totally concentrates on these two (plus Seth's daughter) being stuck in this car so that the viewer can get to know these characters and the troubles they're going through. This way, 6 Balloons finds plenty of time to humanize both of our leads, with Katie especially feeling like such a rich character, one whose tormented by how she can lead her own fulfilling life while also aiding her constantly relapsing brother.

It isn't just Marja-Lewis Ryan's writing that makes Katie such a fascinating character though, Abbi Jacobson is terrific in portraying this character. Having only seen bits and pieces of her boisterous performance on the TV show Broad City, Jacobson eschews any trace of her work on that show with a more down-to-Earth performance that allows Jacobson to show her skills with handling various pieces of more subtle acting. Her taut interaction with a pharmacy clerk, for instance, is rich in tension just from the way Jacobson composes herself and the rhythm of her dialogue delivery. Jacobson uses those kinds of subdued acting techniques to create a superb portrait of a person caught in constant internal conflict.

Dave Franco portrays a type of character, the troubled drug addict, that sometimes lead to hammy performances that feel out of place in dramatic features, but Dave actually shows a real knack for depicting Seth even at his lowest points in a manner that never loses touch with reality. He and Jacobson also have a great sense of chemistry that makes the dynamic between their characters at once engaging and heartbreaking. Those two words are actually fine ways to sum up 6 Balloons as a whole, this feature (which can be found on Netflix now) just knows so well how to grab one's attention while also maintaining a sorrowful undercurrent that feels directly wired into reality. An impressive directorial debut from Marja-Lewis Ryan and an equally impressive first foray into the worlds of dramatic acting for Dave Franco and especially Abbi Jacobson.