As that directory of directors implies, Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia is made up of short films ranging from around two to 15 minutes each, covering a variety of topics that feature the titular speedboat as the connective tissue. Sometimes the shorts are deliberately comedic (as in the opening segment where the boat falls in love with a truck), sometimes they’re parodic (as with the segment where a repo man attempts to repossess the boat during a reality show) and sometimes they’re horrific (such as the segment where a mysterious creature inhabits the body of Rick Ross). Anyone who’s familiar with the comedy of Tim & Eric or the Adult Swim oeuvre will understand Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia’s unique blend of tones, where the comedy isn’t always about gags and punchlines but is inherent simply through the combination of elements and the seriousness of their presentation. It’s the middle ground between online “shitposting” meme groups and experimental film, where the filmmakers are aware of the audacity of their work yet also lend it a sincerity that makes a two-hour collection of wild, surrealistic shorts watchable.

Not that that runtime doesn’t approach a breaking point, however. Like any experimental work, Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia runs into the problem of beginning to resemble an endurance test at times. This isn’t exactly intentional, as it might be in an art installation or the like, but rather because the sheer number of shorts makes the overall experience a little like zooming over choppy ocean waters: fun and wild at first, but eventually one starts to get a little seasick. Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia also paints itself into a corner structurally, because it doesn’t delineate where each segment begins and ends. While doing so would certainly have had an adverse effect of reminding the audience how long they’ve been watching, the lack of consistency between segments starts to make the film feel aimless. 

Those who choose to abandon ship early, however, will miss out on Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia’s grand mosaic of Miami. The film may seem purposeless at first, but eventually it reveals itself to be a portrait of the proud insanity of Florida, one that feels eminently authentic. As each segment delves deeper into the culture of tanned bodies, celebrities, beaches and locals who attempt to live on a land that seems to constantly attempt to reject them, the film starts to resemble 2018’s Mandy as if it were a Pitbull music video, a descent into a phantasmagoria of slick, neon-soaked apocalypse. Overall, there’s an ecological aspect to Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia that culminates in its final segment, where an eldritch buff dolphin creature (voiced by none other than Robert Redford) offers Jim Cummings a kind of absolution. It presents the film as a parable about human beings attempting to capture and tame that which they don’t respect or understand, realizing too late their inability to force the ending they want. As the movie closes to the strains of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” — a song famous for its urban legend that it’s about a man watching another man drown — it’s eerie, sad, ironic and hilarious. Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia is all of these things and more. It is Florida, it is Miami; we are the boat, the boat is us.