The Super Exciting Gang: Unsettling Comedy of Vanities, Erasure, and Racial Appropriation

Ricardo Lorenzo’s dark comedy The Super Exciting Gang comes with fantastic graphics and a plot so absurd it starts to feel like horror of the kind that sneaks in sorrow. All of this makes sense when you take in its list of influences: Being John Malkovich, Living in Oblivion, and in particular, Sorry To Bother You, which has a thing or two to say about erasure and the return of the profitably erased. 

A group of unlikeable characters congregate in a cabin to (quickly) write the next big hit of their comic book cash cow—but only remember to invite their original writer (Marcus Ellison as David Wardlow) when he calls up after years of bad blood. Prominent among them is Lynn (Sabina Almeida), the most popular among their fanbase and a white activist, whose activism, curiously, seems to end up in appropriation. Other characters include the perpetually on his phone, vain leader of the pack, Murphy (Anthony Carvello); the substitute writer, Trevor (Ian Schulz) who hates all pitched ideas until he slaps his name on them; and RJ (Thea Garlid) who has more insecurity than sense in him. David’s flashbacks attach to each face its freakish equivalent from an old group portrait in comic art style—delivering exposition and developing mood in one crackling move. 

His hope of mending relationships is more obviously doomed than the Titanic on your 40th rewatch. 

Somewhere, the characters start to feel like summaries of the worst of each character of Community. Needless to say, they are much less likeable. In a meta sort of twist, David, with his talent, relative composure, and his outfit, echoes Donald Glover in the 2023 GQ interview. Fittingly, his Troy-ish romance with Lynn is a matter of the past. 

As blood flows, marriages explode, and plans fall through in the most anti-climactic of ways, David is frequently made vulnerable—if it is not reminders of his obscurity, it is the absurd, unsettling split from his own name by the people who were once his friends and who have appropriated his work since. The chill it brings on is muffled by the comedic, casual ridiculousness all around. The editing is remarkable, especially when it balances comedy with quiet indignation in Lynn’s sequences, leaving just the kind of room that a sense of unease can pervade. They are in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, after all. That sort of horror has to take a backseat, however, in the face of ExxonMobil’s commission and Lynn’s mandate for something politically relevant—radical even. 

The Super Exciting Gang is the kind of experience that simply appreciates in value with repeat viewings, especially once you get all the reactions it elicits neatly classified and psychologised. Taming its disquietude is also the unwelcome tradeoff. 

Watch The Super Exciting Gang Short Film Trailer