“No, you’re not my type,” is what Amir (Kareem ‘Subway Takes’ Rahma) coldly tells Olivia (Mary Neely). This fills the dead air between them as they ride the subway from Brooklyn all the way up to Harlem. Their friend Teddy (Brandon Wardell) owes them money and tells them of someone who, plot twist, owes him. That person is Uptown Mike (David Zayas), who doesn’t get off work until 3, which is three hours away. Or Something captures 80 minutes of those three hours when they get to know each other.

Neely and Rahma aren’t just the two leads in Or Something, they also worked on the film’s script. They kind of start on the wrong foot as their conversation ten minutes into the film is about gender. Dialogue like this reminds me of a Netflix reality show where a gay man thinks gender binaries are boring. I mean it’s on brand for Mubi to acquire films where characters talk like they’re fighting on Twitter. What film has to do now is to capture ways of speaking that viewers haven’t heard of – this ain’t it.

Amir and Olivia’s conversation thread stays around the gender divide for another ten or maybe fifteen minutes more. Maybe a good starting point is why they need the money or why even give money to Teddy. Or Something eventually gets around to that and maybe I’ll write about that a few paragraphs down. And credit is due for both Neely and Rahma to get off gender talk and be less adversarial. Eventually, they get to each others’ childhood traumas, which is a go t0 staple for dialogue heavy films.

Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder’s Or Something captures the time passing through inter titles with hand written font. After viewers find out what time it is, it shows these two awkward characters walking around in a rainy day. It’s rainy and the brown leaves are still on the ground instead of snow days before Christmas. No snow and two straight people initially unable to speak to each other – we’re hurtling towards the apocalypse. Also, Olivia pees in the woods – aren’t they walking distance for a restaurant they just had lunch at??!

Again, Amir and Olivia eventually reveal their reasons for asking for the overdue money that Teddy owes them. Amir is using it to bail out his brother and Olivia needs it for Frank, her sick cat. Without giving too much away, Or Something reveals that one of them is lying to the other. That reveal feels cheap and a better version of this film needed to incorporate that layer within the dialogue. That version would have been more interesting, better than the film that the viewers watching it got.

Jeffrey Scotti Schroeder’s Or Something is available to watch on MUBI, which –