The Sweet East (2023) review

A group of raucous high school kids are on a field trip to Washington D.C. when a crazed gunman (Andy Milonakis) starts firing in an eatery because he's convinced there's a pedophile ring in the basement - one of the students, Lillian (Talia Ryder), escapes with the help of a punk named Caleb (Earl Cave), meets and actually moves in with White Supremist professor Lawrence (Simon Rex), runs away from him, is immediately "discovered" by Molly (Ayo Edebiri) and Matthew (Jeremy O. Harris) to work as an actress, and so on.  While it does try to "keep moving forward" by stringing together multiple highly unlikely scenarios it strains plausibility before running out of places for her to go, eventually tossing a worn-out Lillian into a castle run by Gibby Haynes (of Butthole Surfers fame) and then having her return home as if nothing happened.  Screenwriter/critic Nick Pinkerton is trying to do his version of Alice in Americaland - in which you can encounter both the alt-Right and Muslim terrorists (who like EDM) within days of each other - but it required an even stronger dose of the surreal ... and maybe dropped the smug demeanor.