Love knows no species in Unleashed, a movie so crazy absurd that one can’t help but just sit back and enjoy it–not knowing what is going to happen next.
Written and directed by Finn Taylor, the sci-fi romantic comedy stars Kate Micucci, Steve Howey, Justin Chatwin, Hana Mae Lee, Josh Brener, with Illeana Douglas and Sean Astin.
The film starts out as Emma (Micucci) shows her boyfriend, Luke (Brener), an app she’s been working on. He believes she could make millions. Unbeknownst to Emma, Luke decides to copy it to his flash drive and clears out her iCloud to make the millions for himself. This results in Emma deciding to make a life for herself out to San Francisco and moves with nothing but her cat, Ajax, and mutt, Summit. She ends up taking a job where she works with Nina (Lee) and Monty (Douglas).
Sometime afterwards, Ajax and Summit run out of the house and are mysteriously transformed into humans but still act like cat and dog. Ajax, now Diego (Chatwin), does his best to blend in and becomes a model while Summit, now Sam (Howey), just can’t stop acting like a dog. That being said, they both want to get Emma’s attention. All the while, they want to find a way to get between Emma and Carl (Astin).
After what happened with Luke, Emma does have some trust issues and as such, she’s not really up to dating. When she meets Diego and Sam, she’s forced to reconsider. Eventually, Emma soon realizes who the two of them are, even confiding in Carl about it. She first confronts Diego before talking with Sam. In some crazy kind of way, she’s able to resolve her issues but once the two return back to being animals, Ajax isn’t really having any of it as we see in the postscript. She gets her happy-ever-after but one could see it coming a mile away.
Taylor, no stranger to the Sundance Film Festival, knows how to make a good movie work. While Unleashed may run quite a bit to the absurd of things, it’s still a cute film that audiences are enjoying. Not surprisingly, Unleashed took home audience awards at both the Mill Valley Film Festival (Audience Favorite – US Cinema Indie Gold Award) and SouthSide Film Festival (Favorite Feature Film Award).
As for Kate Micucci, one-half of comedy singing duo Garfunkel and Oates, the actress-comedian has proven her own over the summer with leading roles in both The Little Hours and Unleashed. Unless there’s another Kate Micucci, she even did some of the character design work for the end title sequence.
Level 33 Entertainment will release Unleashed in select theaters and Digital HD on August 25, 2017. In the Chicago market, Unleashed will play on the big screen at the AMC Woodridge 18 starting on Friday.
