Tapawingo (2025)

Tapawingo in the Sioux language means “beautiful place” or "house of joy" which ironically fits well with the premise of this story about a 30+ year old man named Nate Skoog (Jon Heder) who lives in the same town that he grew up in (the fictional town of Tapawingo), under his mother's (Ramona Skoog played by Amanda Bearse) roof. Nate's an unambitious slacker with a go nowhere job who enjoys spending his days riding around in his dune buggy with his best friend Will Luna (Jay Pichardo) until Nate one day finds himself tasked with picking up the boss's 15 year old son Oswalt Eubank (Sawyer Williams) from high-school. The boy has a bully problem as he has kicked the hornets nest that is the small town crime syndicate known as the Tarwater family & opts to hire Nate to protect him. Billy Zane plays the part of Stoney Tarwater, the family tough guy figurehead. There will be blood. It will be slapstick.

We get to meet an array of characters that impact Nate's life who are played by many familiar faces; From Gina Gershon as Dot the horny coworker to John Ratzenberger who plays Nate's mom's boyfriend, Tom Roan, & of course the Bombpop Gretchen (Kim Matula) the edge lord trash can kicking rocker chick who comes into Nate's life like a wrecking ball.

It would be easy to compare Tapawingo to Napoleon Dynamite, though it's flavor is more akin to the pacing of The Foot Fist Way. But even then the comparison is more akin to the similarities between cousins rather than that of siblings. If anything, Tapawingo feels like an irreverent deadpan comedy made by Louise Belcher (that wasn’t meant to be a comedy at all) and it somehow made it into our reality. I laughed & fully enjoyed the cringe.