Lemon: A Getaway Comedy of Balls, Butts, and Bad Brothers

Jonathan Scott’s Lemon is a 7-minute comedy about two brothers in the aftermath of breaking their third brother out of hospital. Thrown in the trunk, mummy-bandaged, and possibly concussed—Crane is likely feeling his brothers’ love a little too intensely this evening, but it will be a while yet before the brothers notice. 

Until then, it is the season of sibling squabbles. 

The bottle plot opens in medias res. Crane (Dante Giannotti) has been broken out, hospital staff has been assaulted, and an impromptu pee break is ongoing. Ferek (Jonathan Scott) has also managed to snag a coffee. Understandably, Mard’s (Aidan Scott) frustration blends (amusingly)  touchily with disgust. Sitting in the getaway car, the two brothers hash it out sibling style—a petty fight in which winning and losing are equal for their instantaneous forfeiture of dignity. Of course, dignity was already in short supply when they decided to don clown yellow scrubs (one several inches above where it should have sat in a nicer world where we do not store balls out brothers in trunks). There is no light under which they could look flattering, but the actors certainly look like they had fun. 

The plot spends much of its energy on the spectacle of silliness. It is as hard to tell who is older than whom as it is to decide which of the three is most deserving of respect. Mard suffers the more for being both slightly more sensible and certainly more insecure of the two. Ferek nearly rides the high of machismo out of town without Mard. It takes sirens to snap them out of their volatile limbo of resentment and tepid emotionality and into the climax. Served with a surprise reveal that marries clownery to magic in the least magical way, it leaves you crystal clear on the film’s thesis: these clowns could not turn lemons into lemonade if you handed them pre-sweetened water with ice. 

Watch Lemon Short Film Trailer