Ronnie California: The King of Artesia: Crime Comedy with a Joke of a Boss

Adi Kalidindi’s Ronnie California, a crime comedy set in southeast L.A., follows its eponymous hero on the day when it all comes crashing in his cramped gambling den masked as a cramped store for sarees. It is a little like if Uncut Gems were a comedy featuring the South Asian community. 

To Ronnie’s (Anand Mahalingam) misfortune (in a line of misfortunes about to befall the man), the group of Indian women that walks into his store has as little interest in his wares as he does. Their leader is Shivani (Shalini Bathina), of whom the little we learn are through little wayward remarks but who proclaims to know everything about Ronnie aka Suresh. A fireball of a character, Shivani is if HOAs were fun to experience. Every line out of her is crackling with delighted, triumphant spite, which makes her rare fumbles especially comedic. The credit for all this goes almost entirely to Bathina’s flinty performance. It’s a disappointment she does not have more to do, or rather, that her narrative function ends where it does: only as the face of trouble. Anand Mahalingam’s new gen Kamal Hassan face is great for his dramedic role, which includes trying to flirt his way out of impending doom. 

The front of house and back of house are a great layout for the story, and not only because the latter is the comical, criminal underbelly of Ronnie’s enterprise: Ronnie has to juggle antagonists. Out front, Shivani, and in the back, Sidd (Nirvan Patnaik), a geeky young man who owes his move out of bleak prospects (into arguably bleaker prospects) to Ronnie but cannot keep himself out of trouble with him. There is so much hostility masked variously as disdain and macho ribbing, you would think it is a front for something else entirely. A supporting cast of gamblers who are either aggressive or stupid, and sometimes both, bring up the rear. 

As it turns out, Shivani has called the cops on them all—stupid, aggressive, geek, flirt, the whole lot of them. The climax expands the seconds they have before the roof caves in to make room for a confrontation between Ronnie and Sidd, long overdue and bordering on homoerotic. Sidd’s uttered “I won’t do it” has the same indignation and hurt as Florence Pugh in Little Women (the two also happen to be dressed in pastel blue). 

The finale of Ronnie California—funny in the front, dismal under that facade—brings disgrace for Ronnie, and here it might remind you of Abed giving Jeff a reading of who he really is. And who is Ronnie? Someone trying so hard to make the American Dream that you almost feel bad for him, except he is also a sleazebag dressed up as a mafia Don who cannot tell a saree from a salwar kameez. 

Watch Ronnie California: The King of Artesia Short Film Trailer