Catfished 2025 (Uncia Films) Review
Eduardo Castrillo is a busy man. He is currently out doing a cinema run of his movie “Bears on a Ship” around the US and also recently put a new movie out on streaming called “Catfished”. You got to admire the work ethic and the grind. I already had the pleasure of attending a Bears on a Ship screening (where I even sat next to the man himself) and unfortunately to say, Bears on a Ship is the stronger movie out of the two he has released this year.
Eduardo mentioned that Catfished was inspired by watching 90’s comedies and he wanted to make a feel-good movie. The film is about three friends who dive into dating apps, hoping for romance, but their experiences turn out to be far more unexpected than planned. (Hence the title of the film). The three main subplots all do have a unique take on catfishing. You have the guy who doesn’t look like his online picture, a man who lies about his job and a girl who shows up pregnant with twins.
I’m pretty sure she should pass on Troy. Dude looks pissed to be on that dating app.
Catfished however does take its sweet time to really get started. It starts out with our main characters facing problems in their current relationship and even dealing with a divorce. It isn’t until 14 minutes in the film where the dating apps get used. Then it takes another 10 minutes to get to the actual dates themselves. There isn’t much of interest happening in the first act of this movie, with the Tinder app accepting or declining dates going on far longer then it should. There is also a moment where a character mentions declining a date due a missing license plate on the car, but on the picture shown the license plate is just cropped out. How does she know the car is missing a license plate? It would have benefited the film to actually stage a car with no license plate for that joke to fully land.
Thankfully though, once we do get the dates themselves, things began to get more interesting and pick up. The dates do have some pretty funny encounters as Mya finds herself with a guy who is so broke, he ends up asking other customers at the restaurant to help pay for his meal. DeShawn ends up on a date with Cynthia, who is pregnant girl that carries some fun sassy sarcastic vibes to her personality. As where Tiffany ends up on the most boring of the dates, as the two end up bonding over some random show and not much of interest happens.
Cynthia is one of the funnest characters here because she just roasts this guy non stop.
When the dates have some fun moments, there isn’t too much depth to this plot. The film sort of feels like a bunch of Saturday Night Live sketches happening side to side. With a lean runtime of a hour and fifth teen mins, each couple only gets so much screen time and there isn’t really a character journey we get to go on. The film is very dialogue driven, almost to the point where I was getting PSTD flashbacks to my viewing of “Who Needs It?”, but thankfully each date takes place in a different location so that help to keep the palette visually fresh.
This date is off to a awkward start!
Catfished feels like a rough draft or cut. There are some good ideas and moments here, but not enough to keep you fully engaged the full time. The movie tires to do wall-to-wall jokes and I feel like there needed to be higher stakes and more dramatic elements to help with the pacing. I was hoping for a scene where the couples ran into each other on their dates as you could had some good gags there. There is also some rough sound here and there that I hope Eduardo continues to improve on. But one moment struck with me from the Q&A from Bears on a Ship where Eduardo Castrillo mentions that he is not afraid of failure. So hopefully he continues to keep making movies and improving his craft.
