Review Fix Exclusive Tribeca Film Festival Coverage: Dead Ringer Review: 80s-Drenched Nostalga

Directed by New York natives Michael Tucker, Alex Kliment and Dana O’Keefe, “Dead Ringer” is a fantastically conceptualized, chilling and nostalgic documentary that focuses on the elimination of New York City phone booths.

The monologue-driven short is so great that if Shakespeare grew up in The Big Apple in the late-70s, mid-80s, he would’ve written “Dead Ringer” on his own and named it “Macbooth.”

After a few rings, a phone booth starts its one-sided conversation. “We used to run this town,” it says in a New Yawk accent. “For decades we handled all of your drug deals, love affairs, runaways, pimps, pranks, crime tips, heavy breathers and emergencies. You name it, we heard it all.”

Not before long, the documentary plays scenes of cult classics like “The Birds,” “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Superman,” where phone booths play an important but often undermined role.

Late-night shots of the Upper West Side could make you feel like you’re a character in one of Martin Scorsese’s movies.

The short feels less like an attack on gentrifiers and lovers of gadgets and gizmos and more like commentary on the love lost between New Yorkers and phone booths.

Due to the digital age, however, people rather communicate via cell phones and social media apps. While the documentary highlights that the preservation of privacy is at stake it misses a point. New York is known for being fast-paced and being the city that never sleeps. Portable gadgets only keep New Yorkers up a little longer, adding to that sentiment and proving why phone booths are disappearing.

At only three minutes and 46 seconds, “Dead Ringer” caters to Millennials who seem to only have the attention span of a toddler walking in FAO Shwarz, but you probably wouldn’t know about that either unless there was a documentary made about it.

The phone booth ends its monologue with an eerie line: “We’ll be waiting for your call.” Click.

You’re left to ponder… To booth or not to booth, that is the question.

The uncomfortable conversation that is “Dead Ringer” is synonymous with the drunken rant every teenager has experienced mid tweet at thanksgiving dinner. Only your functioning alcoholic uncle cuts into you with a sharp 1980s Brooklyn Italian accent and is equipped with enough classic movie/phone references to make an old copywriter for AT&T blush with envy. For roughly four minutes, a heart-broken narrator guides its viewers through a combination of scattered payphone shots with aerial views of the big apple to deliver a message that is direct and sincere: things were a lot better when a quarter granted a more valuable experience than any other smartphone could. Even if it was just one call.

-Jamar Frith