Fort Tilden is about two mean people, but would have been better were it even meaner.

Allie and Harper are the indie-ubiquitous Brooklyn 20-somethings, two best friends locked in a roommate hate-dependency. Fort Tilden opens with them inserting themselves into the next day beach plans of sexy thang Russ and his nebbishy nobody pal, both Allie and Harper convinced they’re the one who will be breaking off a piece of Russ’ dick. The next day dawns and Allie and Harper set out on an ersatz road trip through Brooklyn, honing their cruelty on each other and the losers they meet along the way.

Fort Tilden Movie Trailer

As a duo Allie and Harper are perpetually at odds, but Fort Tilden gives quick evidence for their interdependency.

Allie (Clare McNulty) is whiny and fearful, believing herself unfairly put upon, even as she dodges the work she’s meant to be doing in preparation for a Peace Corps stint in Liberia (a doomed product of her self-loathing desire to remake herself).

Harper (Bridey Elliott) is a vicious free spirit, simultaneously manipulating those around her and spooling out her artistic ambitions to anyone who will listen. Allie gets stuff done, securing bikes and breakfast, as Harper’s pushy glamour keeps them on-trend.

Together Allie and Harper spend much of the Fort Tilden run time being polite to people, then tearing into them once out of hearing range. It’s a good formula for the characters, who expend so much glee in twisting various knives that some of their rants begin to feel like long passages from spirited monologues. It's hard not to enjoy spectator meanness.

Elliott and McNulty are great at spewing whatever bile the script presents them, but the characters most talky nastiness reveals both Fort Tilden’s strengths and weakness. Harper’s ranting disgust at the idea of getting her vagina anywhere near their icky upstairs neighbor’s bicycle seat has earthy laughs, but the bold comedic game of it sometimes downshifts into “see what sticks” mode.

Allie and Harper going up against folk duo twins, over-decorative-macaroon roommates, and Park Slope parents (is there any more loaded label to put in front of the word “parents”?) is funny, but also contains Fort Tilden’s biggest surrender as a dark comedy. The unfortunate bit about so many of the encounters in Fort Tilden is that Allie and Harper’s targets often are giant losers.

Who throws a rooftop concert and makes people sit and watch in silence? You too will hate the folk duo twins. One scene features a fanclub of catty gay groupies ripped straight from Jenna Maroney’s dressing room on 30 Rock.

These aren't hard people to mock, and Fort Tilden feels less bold for targeting them. In trying to quickly sketch characters that will only appear in one scene writers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Roger have presented their scathing protagonists with unworthy opponents. Too much of Fort Tilden feels like Allie and Harper armed with shotguns against an army of party balloons.

It’s when they feel situated more in the real world that Harper and Allie’s brittle mean-spiritedness turns from simple potshotting to something more sublime. Beginning with an Indian cab driver who is all-too-familiar with Harper’s rapacious capitalist father, piercing the bubble of Harper and Allie’s blundering power, Fort Tilden finds suitable challenges for Allie and Harper as the movie approaches its endgame.

The last half hour of Fort Tilden shines, as Allie and Harper turn against each other, victimize that which must never be victimized (kittens), and get out-classed in millennial entitlement. While the payoff of their exhausting journey doesn’t feel worthwhile for Allie and Harper, it ends well for the audience.

Unapologetically revealing to someone that you’ve left their borrowed bike in a pile of trash is a strange way to signal your character’s growth, but that’s exactly the dark realm of heartwarming Fort Tilden finds itself in by the end. There’s something narratively endearing about selfish people finding each other in a selfish world. It’s just too bad Fort Tilden isn’t so irredeemable throughout.