June 30- July 6 Puke Week!: Throwing up isn’t very funny, but making your internet friends watch a puke movie is!

This is the third of Sean Baker’s movies that I’ve watched, and in each, I’ve hated the protagonist throughout, wondering where the movie was even going, but by the end, I had become emotional, invested, and saddened by the plight of the lead. That’s talent.

Mikey “Saber” Davies (Simon Rex) is starting over, 17 years after leaving Texas to be a porn star. He shows up at the home of his ex-wife, Lexi (Bree Elrod), and her mother, Lil (Brenda Deiss), with a black eye and $22, begging for a place to stay. No one will hire him, so he starts selling marijuana for Leondria (Judy Hill) and her daughter June (Brittney Rodriguez), slowly earning back the trust of Lexi and making his way back into her bed. Despite how much she dislikes him, the sex is always good. So good that he turned her into a porn star too, many years ago.

To celebrate their good fortune, they visit a doughnut shop, where Mikey falls for Strawberry (Suzanna Son), a 17-year-old girl working the counter. It’s not love. It’s knowing that he can lead her to massive fame in the adult industry, which will get him back the job that made his entire identity. As she rides around on a child bike and bum rides from Lonnie (Ethan Darbone), he starts his scheme to get her to love him and go to Los Angeles.

Things don’t work out. Lonnie kills several people by accident when he swerves across the highway — puking immediately after — and nearly gets Mikey arrested. His drug sales to clients he was told not to engage with got all his money taken from him, money that was going to pay his way back to California. Naked, with all of his clothes in a trash bag, he barely makes it to Strawberry’s house by dawn. She answers the door, perfection in a bathing suit, as the camera closes in on him. He cries.

Baker and co-writer Chris Bergoch also made Starlet and became fascinated by the idea of a suitcase pimp, a term that Lexi says to him at the end of the film, one that makes him shut down all his attitude. It’s a man who is only in porn because he has a girlfriend. He may say he’s a manager, but all he does is carry her bags to the shoot and sit outside while she makes money by having sex with other men.

Rex, being the lead, is interesting, as he did solo gay masturbation videos before becoming a star. Obviously, he had no problem going full frontal in this.

I wonder why I ended up liking Mikey so much. All he does is use people, causes pain and blames everyone else. But maybe in real life, he’d be the same way, that friend who always comes out ahead despite ruining everything he touches.