Though looking for to protect its prestige with the subsequent “Game of Thrones” or “Succession,” HBO will at times offer the far more worthwhile services of throwing cash at what could possibly best be identified as an art project — John Lurie’s “Painting With John,” Terence Nance’s “Random Functions of Flyness,” Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal.”
Martine Gutierrez plays Vanesja, Julio’s sidekick in “Fantasmas.”
(Atsushi Nishijima / HBO)
The network’s newest mad wager, premiering Friday at 11 p.m. Pacific (also streaming on Max), is Julio Torres’ “Fantasmas” — his last was “Los Espookys,” co-designed with Fred Armisen and Ana Fabrega, canceled just after two seasons — an absurdist queer comedy that will come on like Luis Buñuel by way of Gregg Araki. Composed, directed and starring Torres, it’s a sweet work of loving weirdness that feels at once summary and personalized. It will work on me like Thu Tran’s “Food Occasion,” Duncan Trussell and Pen Ward’s “The Midnight Gospel,” “Joe Pera Talks With You,” “At Home With Amy Sedaris” (who seems here) and “Space Ghost Coastline to Coast” — exhibits that may perhaps not all operate for yrs but which burn off brightly although they do. Increased praise I can’t bestow.
Torres, a previous author and performer for “Saturday Night Live” who also wrote, directed and starred in the 2023 movie “Problemista,” stars below as a model of himself — which is to say a writer and an actor who tends to make, or makes an attempt to make a dwelling in present business enterprise, which provides him largely with poor options. (His own suggestions — a remake of “The Lion King” from the position of check out of a zebra, a reboot of the tooth fairy as an addiction tale — are not particularly promising.)
His increased job, having said that, is as “a Julio … I wake up, and I just form of Julio.” (This includes consulting with Crayola on a clear crayon he’d call … Fantasmas.) He’s in his mid-30s but will come across as determinedly ageless his air is deadpan, perplexed, generally discouraged. He is sometimes influenced to make a very poor decision, but, as with the silent comedians of outdated, the universe will contrive to help save him.
There are by means of strains to the collection, involving the decline of and look for for an earring the requirement of acquiring a new area to reside and Julio’s worry and fretting more than a birthmark that he insists on calling a mole. (Torres is a melanoma survivor.) There is his endeavor to obtain “proof of existence” — he simply cannot rent an condominium or even journey the subway without the need of it — which he refuses to implement for. He investigates a provider that claims to make him incorporeal, to “get rid of the burden of acquiring a body” — mainly because of that “mole,” I guess.
Aiding or hindering him in these pursuits are his femme fatale all-reason agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez) and robot assistant Bibo (voiced by Joe Rumrill), who inevitably will conceive a drive to act. (Bibo asks Julio for a elevate to find the money for performing classes, head shots “and a Soho Household membership to mingle with sector insiders.”) These arcs snake in and all over a wide range of tangentially or unrelated small stories — “sketches” would not do them justice — which could function their way into other stories down the line. Some are horror stories, some have a tinge of film noir. Some are framed as tv reveals. Some are oddly shifting. Several will satisfy at the stop, fairly fantastically.
There are dreams, but they are not basically unique from the rest of what we see. The sets are mere suggestions of sets. Projections, intended to glimpse like projections, offer the backdrops of street scenes and subway platforms.
Bowen Yang as an elf suing Santa Claus in “Fantasmas.”
(Monica Lek / HBO)
Along the way, we’ll meet up with Bowen Yang as an elf suing Santa Claus for wages, introduced as a “Court TV” broadcast Aidy Bryant pitching dresses for toilets a nightclub for gay hamsters, “where they could wander in, dance, misbehave and forget about the laborous infinite loop of their exercising wheel,” and also a hamster CVS mermaids staffing a connect with center a tiny blue Smurf-like figurine that gets to be Julio’s inept social media director an abusive govt goldfish and Paul Dano in a sexualized parody of “ALF.”
Emma Stone (an government producer), Rachel Dratch, Cole Escola and Rosie Perez show up as “The Correct Women of New York,” a “Real Housewives” parody. Kate Berlant performs an actor taking part in a theme-park variation of a bisexual superhero (“I went to Juilliard,” we hear her imagine), who gets involved with a fan whose lifetime the character changed (Spike Einbinder, sibling of Hannah). Steve Buscemi embodies the letter Q, as well avant-garde for his area in the alphabet — he must be with W, X, Y and Z, not amongst P and R — and offended about it.
“There’s no marketplace for strange,” states Q. But to choose by the pretty existence of “Fantasmas,” there is.
