We first meet Mickey (Bill Skarsgård, amusingly frantic) and Jules (Maika Monroe, equally frenzied); two young, clumsy Bonnie-and-Clyde-wannabe lovers who “Pumpkin and Honey Bunny” their way from smalltime crime to smalltime crime, hoping to eventually end up somewhere in Florida, where they are convinced a new, worry-free life awaits. Their vision of the orange-hued, warm and beachy Sunshine State—which cinematographer Matt Mitchell represents in dreamy glimpses—looks curiously like a nostalgic and feverish Harmony Korine movie. Perhaps Mickey and Jules just miss their teenage years of being forever spring breakers. Or more likely, they were never before granted a carefree youthfulness, which they just desire to claim retroactively once and for all. Smart, they most certainly are not. But perhaps they still deserve a break in life after all.
Berk and Olsen don’t quite go out of their way to suggest a profound back-story for the troubled youngsters—this isn’t necessarily that deep a film, nor does it want to be—but Monroe and Skarsgård invite the audience in with their childish rawness, and buy some unearned good will from the viewers along the way. As gifted actors, they sell the purposely unrefined lines of dialogue exchanged between their respective characters and almost immediately, become a kooky crime pair one simply can’t hate: inept yet charming, ambitious but painfully naïve.
Mickey and Jules are so hopeless as runaway felons that after robbing a gas station, they realize, of all things, that their car is out of gas. Luckily enough, Jules notices a lonesome mailbox perched on the side of the road, fronting a handsome house with a car waiting to be stolen and a mysterious basement that houses a little girl (Blake Baumgartner) chained to a poll. What kind of good-hearted yet down-on-their-luck criminals would the dreamy lovers be, if they don’t as much as attempt to help the (what looks to be a) kidnapped child?
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