Adults wearing braces, children turning into dogs, giving away babies, giving birth to soccer balls, and more peculiar images abound in the first delightfully ludicrous trailer for Greener Grass, arriving in October. Adapted from the short film written by Jocelyn Deboer and Dawn Luebbe that premiered at SXSW, DeBoer and Luebbe take the director’s chair this time around for their feature length take on their short film, which premiered at Sundance.
This biting satire conveys the passive-aggressive competition between two suburban moms, Jill and Lisa (played by Deboer, and Luebbe respectively), which takes a sharp turn into the bizarre and paranoia when Jill gives her baby away to Lisa in an altruistic gesture. Adding to this almost Lynchian landscape is Jill’s husband (played by SNL’s Beck Bennet) becoming obsessed with drinking pool water, Jill’s son Julian turning into a golden retriever and his school teacher (played by The Good Place‘s D’arcy Corden) is left unfazed by this development. It all sounds like the recipe for a guaranteed future cult classic.
Our review by Dan Mecca sums up the films off-kilter comedy as, “DeBoer and Luebbe have great chemistry, ping-ponging off-kilter dialogue nicely. As filmmakers, the details of their world are jolting, which works. For example, everybody wears braces. Everybody drives golf carts. These elements are never explained, thankfully. Nothing is more subjective than comedy and this brand will surely turn many off. No matter. Those behind Greener Grass are clearly unfazed by the weirdness. They wallow in it, unabashedly.”
See the trailer below.
In a day-glo-colored, bizarro version of suburbia where adults wear braces on their already-straight teeth, everyone drives golf carts, and children magically turn into golden retrievers, soccer moms and best friends Jill (Jocelyn DeBoer) and Lisa (Dawn Luebbe) are locked in a passive aggressive battle-of-the-wills that takes a turn into the sinister when Lisa begins systematically taking over every aspect of Jill’s life—starting with her newborn daughter. Meanwhile, a psycho yoga teacher killer is on the loose, Jill’s husband (Beck Bennett) has developed a curious taste for pool water, and Lisa is pregnant with a soccer ball. That’s just the tip of the gloriously weird iceberg that is the feature debut from writers-directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, a hilariously demented, Stepford Wives-on-acid satire destined to be an instant cult classic.
Greener Grass hits theaters and VOD on October 18.