The Dating Pool Needs Chlorine

Read Time:7 Minute, 20 Second

MOVIE REVIEWS
Floating Carousel
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Genre: Dark Comedy, Comedy-Drama
Year Released: 2025, 2026
Runtime: 1h 41m
Directors: Delilah Napier, Lucy Powers
Writers: Delilah Napier, Lucy Powers
Cast: Delilah Napier, Lucy Powers, Gus Birney, Michael Cyril Creighton, Elsie Hewitt, Jon Rudnitsky, Dylan Baker, Catherine Curtin, Jessica Hecht, Reg Rogers
Where to Watch: opening in theaters beginning September 17, 2026, at The Cinemas New York City

RAVING REVIEW: There’s a kind of exhaustion that comes from watching people making themselves miserable in the pursuit of companionship, especially when everyone involved seems convinced there must be a better person just one swipe away. FLOATING CAROUSEL understands what exhaustion really is and, instead of trying to make modern dating look appealing, turns it into something increasingly ridiculous, uncomfortable, and eventually just unhinged. It’s funny because so much of what happens feels exaggerated right up until you realize that very little of it seems impossible.

Writer/directors Delilah Napier and Lucy Powers follow a group of twenty-somethings navigating New York City relationships that rarely resemble what most people would describe as healthy. There’s a Gender Studies graduate student, an aspiring cabaret performer, a professional cuddler, a woman refusing to acknowledge exactly what kind of arrangement she’s entered into, and a man whose approach to monogamy could at best be described as nonexistent. Their stories cross and overlap as dates go wrong, expectations get distorted, sex becomes another bit of negotiation, and almost everyone starts treating intimacy like a service that can be ordered, upgraded, canceled, or replaced.

That could have easily become cynical, but FLOATING CAROUSEL is more interested in making these people funny than judging them. Napier and Powers have a good ear for the ways people try to maintain dignity while doing something humiliating, and some of the best laughs come from characters acting as though an absurd situation is perfectly normal. Nobody wants to admit they’re lonely, nobody wants to look desperate, and almost everyone seems determined to maintain the illusion that they’re the one controlling whatever they’ve stumbled into.

The fragmented structure fits that idea, especially in the beginning. Dating apps already reduce people to a collection of disconnected encounters, and the movie adopts a similar cadence as characters appear, disappear, cross paths, and occasionally circle back. There’s an intentional restlessness to it that makes New York feel less like the romantic playground countless movies have sold us and more like an enormous waiting room filled with people wondering whether somebody else is about to walk through the door.

There’s also something about how specific the comedy feels. Napier and Powers drew from their own experiences dating in New York after the pandemic. That connection shows in small details that would be difficult to manufacture from the outside. These aren’t generic jokes about dating apps or just complaints about people ghosting each other. FLOATING CAROUSEL is much better when examining the weird little transactions people make with themselves so they can accept behavior they would recognize as ridiculous if it were happening to somebody else.

Napier and Powers are smart enough not to surround themselves with a cast that feels too similar. The ensemble includes some familiar faces such as Michael Cyril Creighton, Jon Rudnitsky, Dylan Baker, Catherine Curtin, Jessica Hecht, and Elsie Hewitt, giving the movie enough variety that its encounters don’t blur together. Some characters are intentionally almost generic while others are considerably quieter. That imbalance often helps the comedy because you never quite know whether the next interaction will be believable or completely insane.

The problem is that the movie’s greatest strength eventually starts working against it. FLOATING CAROUSEL has so many characters, concepts, relationships, and detours competing for attention that few people really ever develop beyond the dating nightmare they represent. The movie wants the accumulation of these encounters to say something larger about loneliness and the increasing commercialization of intimacy. At times, it feels more like an excellent collection of observations than a fully connected story. You can see the larger picture taking shape, though not every piece gets the same amount of emotional investment.

Then the film decides it hasn’t gone nearly far enough. Without getting into the specifics, Napier and Powers eventually push the story into stranger territory, taking the frustrations that had previously been bubbling under the surface and turning them into something bigger. I admire the willingness to do it because the less risky version of FLOATING CAROUSEL would have simply continued cycling through increasingly awful dates until the credits rolled. Instead, the filmmakers make a choice that changes the movie and sends everything careening in a direction that feels both inspired and slightly disconnected from what came before.

That shift will most definitely divide people. There’s an argument to be made here that FLOATING CAROUSEL becomes a more interesting movie once it stops pretending to live by the “normal” expected set of rules. Some of its funniest stuff comes from embracing the insanity. At the same time, the escalation exposes just how loosely connected some of these storylines have been. The movie gets louder and more chaotic when a few of its characters could have benefited from another quiet scene or two, leaving the final stretch entertaining but not quite as satisfying as the buildup suggests. What makes it work is that there’s real confidence behind the mess. Napier and Powers aren’t just making another movie about how terrible dating apps are, and they don’t pretend technology alone created this problem. FLOATING CAROUSEL is interested in what happens when people become so accustomed to treating relationships as temporary that genuine connection begins to feel almost suspicious. Professional companionship, casual sex, finances, and endless options on the carousel all occupy the same world, and the joke is that everybody still seems surprised when none of it makes them less lonely.

That idea gives the movie significantly more substance than its more raunchy exterior suggests. The title itself becomes increasingly appropriate as everyone keeps circling one another, occasionally changing partners without ever really getting anywhere. There’s always another person coming around the bend, another possibility, another reason not to commit to the person standing in front of you. FLOATING CAROUSEL finds something both funny and sad in that cycle without suddenly becoming sentimental about it.

At 101 minutes, the movie could have benefited from tightening a few less essential ideas, particularly once the larger story begins to pull the characters together. Yet cutting too aggressively might also remove some of the strange vibes that make the film as memorable as it is. This is a movie willing to be awkward, vulgar, uncomfortable, petty, and occasionally ridiculous because those qualities belong to the people in it, not to something they added just to provoke a reaction.

FLOATING CAROUSEL doesn’t always work; there are a few struggles along the way, but I’d rather watch a comedy take this kind of swing than settle for another dating story built from all the same familiar moments. Napier and Powers have made something messy about people whose romantic lives are even messier, and the edges feel appropriate even when they keep the film from working as you’d expect. It’s sharp, strange, very funny, and just thoughtful enough underneath all the decisions to suggest that the problem isn’t that everybody has forgotten how to find someone. They may have forgotten what they’re actually looking for.

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