The Baltimorons sits in that lovely corner of holiday movies where the season is cold, the people are messier than they want to admit, and the comfort comes not from miracles but from accidental connection. Jay Duplass directs it in a very classical, unfussy way, letting performers and place do most of the work rather than punching it up with big comic beats or needle drops. It is closer to the gentler rhythms of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers than to something broader like Love Actually, even if it never quite reaches the emotional heights of the former.
Michael Strassner plays Cliff, a newly sober Baltimore guy whose Christmas Eve is already off to a bad start when a dental emergency sends him to an older, weary dentist named Didi, played with a sharp but warm edge by Liz Larsen. Cliff is engaged to Brittany (Olivia Luccardi), though the movie very quickly makes it clear that the friction in his life is coming from inside the house. He is a man who has cleaned up the obvious problem, not the root problems. Which is why, when he meets Didi, he is way too eager to drift. Instead of doing what he is supposed to do on Christmas Eve, he spends the night roaming Baltimore with a woman he has just met.
Duplass and writers let that premise stay small. The two of them visit Didi’s ex husband, check on some crab traps in the river, wander familiar Baltimore blocks, and even push Cliff back toward stand up comedy, which he has not done since getting sober. Every stop on this long night says something about them. Cliff is looking for a version of himself that is not defined by relapse and disappointment. Didi is lonely and prickly, suspicious of Cliff’s motives at first, then quietly grateful for company. Strassner and Larsen have surprisingly natural chemistry, the kind that makes you believe two strangers could choose to spend the most family centered night of the year together.
A lot of the movie’s charm comes from how ordinary it allows everything to be. This is not a Christmas movie about saving the town or learning the True Meaning of the Holidays. It is about two Baltimoreans (or Baltimorons, as the title playfully calls them) who are stuck and who, for one night, help unstick each other. The ho hum score, the wintry Baltimore locations, the walk and talk energy, all of it leans into that small scale. Duplass has always had a knack for finding pathos inside awkward conversations and this is right in his lane.
It is not perfect. The September release is a weird call for a film that screams late November, and you can feel the movie reach for sentiment in the final stretch instead of fully earning it. Cliff’s home life is drawn a little thin, almost as if we are being rushed out of the parts of the story that might complicate the hangout vibes. But taken as a modest, slightly melancholy holiday dramedy, The Baltimorons really works. It understands seasonal depression, it understands how sobriety can make familiar traditions feel alien, and it understands how a stranger can sometimes be easier to talk to than your own partner.
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If studios want to keep funding mid budget, actor driven, Christmastime hangouts like this, starring working character actors instead of IP, I will happily line up every year. The Baltimorons may not be The Holdovers, but it is good company and a cozy watch, and it makes Baltimore in winter feel like exactly where you want to be for 100 minutes.
Score: 7/10
The Baltimorons (2025)
- Cast: Michael Strassner, Liz Larsen, Olivia Luccardi
- Director: Jay Duplass
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Holiday
- Runtime: 100 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: September 5, 2025
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