There’s always something strange brewing at the Black Cat Café.
Caffeine movie storyline. A neurotic young commitment-phobe runs into his ex-girlfriend while he’s whacked out on killer dope; a high strung control freak finds out that her husband-to-be is a transvestite; a hyper-possessive boyfriend discovers that his girlfriend is an ex-porn actress; and the manager’s boyfriend has a ménage a trois which he says is forgivable because the girls were identical twins.
Caffeine is an eccentric comedy about these characters’ hapless attempts to repair their fractured relationships as they confront issues of fidelity, betrayal, forgiveness, and commitment. During one lunchtime at this offbeat London coffee house, the relationships of the quirky staff and several couples are suddenly turned upside down by the sudden revelations of supremely embarrassing secrets and idiosyncrasies, generally having to do with their rampaging sexual appetites.
CAFFEINE invites us to spend a lunch hour with the quirky staff and patrons at a London coffee house, the Black Cat Cafe. In this ensemble comedy, the relationships of several couples are turned upside down by the revelation of embarrassing secrets and idiosyncrasies.
A neurotic young man unexpectedly runs into his ex-girlfriend while he’s whacked out on killer dope; a highly strung lawyer finds out that her husband-to-be is a transvestite; a friend reveals that he’s been arrested for exposing himself to a minor; a possessive boyfriend discovers that his girlfriend is an ex porn actress; an elderly lady goes ballistic when she mistakes a patron for her ex-husband whose bizarre fetish ended their marriage; and the Manager of the café struggles with the revelation that her boyfriend, also the chef, cheated on her in a threesome. CAFFEINE is a film about the lives of these characters and their hapless attempts to repair their fractured relationships.
Mike and Danny (Andrew Lee Potts and Mike Vogel respectively) sit down to lunch at the Black Cat Café on an ordinary day in London. Mike, a hopeless neurotic, is far, far too stoned for comfort. He’s also in torment over his very recent decision to break up with his girlfriend of four years. His incorrigible buddy, Danny, pounces — insisting that all Mike needs to do to feel better is find a new girl, shag her, then dump her. To make matters worse, Mike becomes increasingly paranoid as a mad old woman sits in the corner of the café staring continuously at him with a menacing look of contempt.
Rachel (Marsha Thomason), the manager of the café, is dealing with her own relationship issues. The previous evening, Rachel’s longtime boyfriend Charlie (Callum Blue), the chef at the café, drunkenly confessed that he had had a ménage a trois with a pair of identical twins. Rachel arrives at the Black Cat to find Charlie passed out on her office couch, she douses him with water, fires him, and threatens to call the police if he doesn’t go away. On his way out, Charlie finds a condom wrapper on the office floor, and, of course, begins to obsess about who had sex in his girlfriend in her office. Charlie resolves to hang out in the café foyer until Rachel is ready to talk.
Even though he’s the sole chef, Rachel maintains her resolve to exile Charlie even after she learns that the owner of the posh Mayfair restaurant, The Marion, is on his way for a surprise visit. It’s the final step before he decides if he will hire her. Although Rachel has yearned to work at The Marion for years, she’s kept the fact that she applied for a job there a secret from Charlie and the rest of the Black Cat staff.
Tom (Mark Pellegrino) and Vanessa (Mena Suvari), two of the waiters at the café, witness the unfolding drama between Rachel and Charlie – the caustic Vanessa writing it off as a typical male bullshit — and are unnerved when Rachel asks them to lend a hand cooking. Ever emotional, Tom marches off in a camp strop. The final member of the Black Cat family, Dylan (Breckin Meyer), an American aspiring author, is too busy waiting for a call from his literary agent to think about much else.
When Danny recognizes Gloria (Sonya Walger), a one-time porn actress, sitting alone at a table reading Anna Karenina, he decides she would be just the antidote for Mike’s blues. Resisting Mike’s protestations, Danny approaches Gloria and starts praising her for her porno films. At this point, her possessively jealous boyfriend, Mark (Orlando Seale), returns from the toilet and is horrified by what he hears, clearly having had no idea about his girlfriend’s sordid past. Danny retreats to his table, as Mark, his jealousy exacerbated by visions of Gloria being shagged by every bloke in the café, explodes in a full-blown rant. Gloria finally tells him he should leave the café to “get some perspective.”
When Danny excuses himself to the toilets, a thoroughly embarrassed Mike is confronted by the mad old woman in the corner, Lucy (Roz Witt), who loudly hurls all manner of insults and threats in Mike’s direction. Mike escapes to join Danny in the men’s toilets and refuses to return to the restaurant until he’s certain the old lady is gone.
The incident forces Vanessa to confess to Tom and Dylan that Lucy is her grandmother, and that Lucy was driven crazy and institutionalized after discovering her husband of 20 years dressed only in a diaper, being spanked by a prostitute dressed as a nursemaid. Because Lucy is allowed one day a month out of the home, Vanessa has been saddled with her. She implores her grandma to keep quiet.
An upwardly mobile 30-something, John (Andrew Abelson) enters the café to meet his yuppie-lawyer friend David (Mark Dymond). John has been accused of exposing himself to a minor late one night in an alleyway. John insists that he was simply urinating behind a pub. Rather than tell the truth to the police, he claimed to have been with David all evening and now wants David, a lawyer, to confirm his alibi. David adamantly refuses. Desperate, John threatens to tell David’s uptight fiancé, Angela (Jules Leyser), a long-held confidence. When Angela shows up at the café, David pre-empts the blackmail and confesses to Angela his embarrassing fetish: he sometimes dresses up in her bra and panties when she’s out of the house. With the wedding only a week away, Angela is, to say the least, shocked by this revelation and runs to the ladies room, retching.
In the meantime, Laura (Katherine Heigl), a shy, hesitant young woman recently out of a relationship, waits for a blind date arranged by her brother-in-law Sean. Steve (Daz Crawford) opens the date by bragging about his new pump action shotgun (“It’s great for killing pigeons, the dirty little bastards”) and telling Laura that her brother-in-law is a compulsive masturbator. The loud, abrasive, hyper-masculine Steve must be the worst blind date of all time. The timid Laura finally works up the confidence to bid Steve adieu and retreats to the toilets where she is welcomed by Angela’s retching. The two strangers bond and share war stories from the front lines of the battle between the sexes. Laura suggests that perhaps a commitment from a man who opts to wear women’s underwear is better than no commitment at all.
Returning from the restroom, Mike is horrified to discover his ex-girlfriend has also turned up at the café with a date. In fact, it is Laura with the blind date from hell, Steve; but Mike misreads the body language and mistakenly thinks they are getting along swimmingly. He is even more miserable than before.
As the lunch rush descends on the café, it becomes painfully apparent that the place is falling apart and Rachel needs Charlie to be at work in the kitchen to restore order. Especially because her prospective new employer will arrive any minute. In the café, Lucy’s dementia causes her to mistake the youthful Mike for her long-dead, depraved husband. Meanwhile, Mike has worked up the nerve to introduce himself to the ex-porn queen Gloria. But it’s all for naught, as Lucy attacks Mike, wrestles him into a headlock while screaming “pervert” at the top of her lungs. After a wicked forehand with a rolled newspaper nearly decapitates Mike, Lucy is tossed from the café by Tom and Dylan… upsetting Vanessa who searches the neighborhood in vain for her grandmother.
With Vanessa missing and Dylan scarcely helping, Tom becomes nearly hystrerical amidst the chaos and the mounting numbers of back orders and threatens to quit. Rachel begs him to stay, revealing her secret about the job offer and surprise inspection. Always loyal, Tom relents, only if Charlie is let back in the kitchen. Rachel reluctantly agrees. Wandering the streets muttering to herself, Lucy spies something interesting in a car. Could it be a pump action shotgun?
In the kitchen, Charlie has asked each member of the café staff about the condom and concluded that Rachel slept with Dylan to avenge his infidelity. Unhinged by visions of Rachel and Dylan drunkenly romancing each other, Charlie, with impeccable timing, storms into the café to express his undying love for Rachel…. creating quite the scene just as Mr. Davies (Neil Dickson) from The Marion arrives. Rachel is mortified.
Dude (Hal Oszan), a spaced-out American hippie with guitar in tow, determines this is the perfect moment to serenade them with his ridiculously morbid original song “I Wish I Was Dead.” Mr. Davies, as well as the customers at the Black Cat Café, is appalled. Mike, however, is moved to tears. Returning to their table, Angela gives David and John three ultimatums: she’s wearing the dress at the wedding; they’ll buy David his own set of underwear so hers won’t be stretched out of shape; and if anyone ever finds out about this, she will kill them both. David and Angela leave the bewildered John with the bill.
Deeply moved by Dude’s song, Mike decides to ignore Danny’s advice and try to make up with Laura. However, their conversation is cut short by the powerful blast of a shotgun wielded by – who else? – Lucy, the mumbling old woman who mistook Mike for her philandering husband. She has come to take Mike home to cure him of his “problem”. Everyone ducks for cover as the gun fires a second time into the wall. Dylan, who just learned that the publishers passed on his novel, breaks out of his funk and crashes a plate over Lucy’s head knocking her unconscious. Vanessa rushes in to her aid.
Startled by the sound of the blasts, Rachel excuses herself from her interview with Davies and restores order in the cafe. Charlie, meanwhile, races into the office to calm a confused Mr. Davies, and sings Rachel’s praises, knowing that if she gets the job, she’ll be leaving the café and, quite possibly, him behind. Rachel overhears Charlie’s conversation with Davies and is clearly moved by this selfless behavior.
Mike confides in Danny that the shotgun blast so terrified him that he shat his pants. Literally. Danny is shocked by this declaration, and carefully helps Mike toward the door, where they nearly collide with Laura who has just emerged from the ladies room. Embarrassed at first, Mike realizes this is his chance to connect with Laura and hesitantly asks if maybe he can call her sometime. After suffering the likes of Steve, she is clearly elated by the prospect. Then she asks “What’s that smell?” just as an irate Danny drags Mike out the door.
After Mr. Davies leaves the cafe, Rachel tells Charlie he has offered her the job but she isn’t sure she should accept. Charlie encourages her to take it. They both join the rest of the wait staff in the kitchen, where Rachel announces that she’s decided to take the Marion job. Tom’s eyes well up. He’s clearly emotionally bruised from the chaos of the day. Rachel pulls him aside asking if he’ll replace her as manager of the Black Cat. He tearfully accepts.
Later that afternoon, a calm has replaced the lunch hour chaos at the café and Rachel and Charlie talk about all that has transpired. Rachel, touched by Charlie’s willingness to go out on a limb for her, agrees to think about giving him another chance.
As the day ends, Vanessa is walking her grandmother back to her domicile when Lucy briefly escapes her perpetual daze and says, “Thank you for a lovely afternoon, dear.” “Of course,” says Vanessa, and hugs her sweetly, shielding her from traffic. The usually caustic Vanessa reveals she had been hiding a warm and affectionate side we hadn’t seen until this moment.
In the kitchen, Tom asks Dylan if there’s any truth to the rumor that Rachel and he were involved, but Dylan interrupts, reminding him that the condom was theirs. Tom replies, “I know…but with all the talk I thought there might have been….” He relaxes and apolozizes, finally accepting the fact that everything is going to be okay. “What a day,” says Tom. “I can’t believe I’m going to be the new boss.” Dylan smiles: “Yeah, well, just remember who’s the boss in the bedroom.” It turns out that Tom and Dylan are a healthier, more loving couple than any other we’ve met on this crazy day at the Black Cat Cafe.
Caffeine (2007)
Directed by: John Cosgrove
Starring: Mena Suvari, Breckin Meyer, Marsha Thomason, Katherine Heigl, Mike Vogel, Sonya Walger, Andrew Lee Potts, Mark Pellegrino, Andrew Ableson, Orlando Seale
Screenplay by: Dean Craig
Production Design by: Edward L. Rubin
Cinematography by: Shawn Maurer
Film Editing by: Suzanne Hines
Costume Design by: Oneita Parker
Set Decoration by: Kimberly Wannop
Art Direction by: Jay Durrwachter
Music by: David Kitay
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug use.
Studio: Steaming Hot Coffee, LLC.
Release Date: March 16, 2007
Views: 131
