Two wedding guests who would rather be anywhere else find they cannot leave: that is the hook of Palm Springs, Max Barbakow's 2020 comedy, which adds fantasy, mystery and romance to a 90-minute running time.
What is Palm Springs about?
Nyles drifts through a wedding in Palm Springs without a care, a guest who seems to have stopped worrying about anything. Sarah is the maid of honor, and a reluctant one, getting through the day because she has to. A chance meeting at the reception throws them together, and what should have been a brief encounter becomes something neither can walk away from. They are stuck, unable to get clear of the venue, of each other, or of their own habits and histories. The story plays that predicament for laughs and for feeling in roughly equal measure, as two very different people work out what to do with company they did not choose.
About the cast
Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti head the cast, with J.K. Simmons, Tyler Hoechlin, Camila Mendes, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner and Chris Pang filling out the wedding party and its orbit. It is a sizeable ensemble for a compact film, which fits a story set at a celebration full of relatives, friends and plus-ones.
Context & significance
Palm Springs carries four genre labels, an unusual spread for a film this short. Comedy and romance are the obvious pair, given the wedding setting and the two leads pushed together against their plans. The fantasy and mystery tags signal that the reason they cannot leave is not an ordinary one, and that part of the pleasure lies in finding out the rules along with them. Max Barbakow directs this American production, released in 2020. At 90 minutes it wastes little time, and the single location, a desert resort town on a wedding day, gives it a contained, sunlit feel. K-Time offers the film with a Persian dub as well as Persian subtitles, so it works for households where not everyone follows English dialogue at speed.
Watching Palm Springs on Ktime
Palm Springs can be played on K-Time after logging in to a K-Time account; reading this page costs nothing. K-Time is a Persian-focused streaming service for Iranians living abroad, with menus and search in Farsi. For this film you can pick the Persian-dubbed track or keep the original audio and switch on Persian subtitles.