In The Brass Teapot, Juno Temple and Michael Angarano star as a young rural Indiana married couple grappling with crippling finances as they start their life together. Temple is Alice, a highly educated woman who cannot find a job worthy of her training, and Angarano is John, who has a job as a telemarketer, but feels it is beneath him… especially when his boss rides him constantly.
The two are doing their best to get by, but as many married people know… money is a huge source of strife. They think they have found the answers to their prayers when a car accident plants them in front of an antique shop where Alice finds a brass teapot that for some reason that she cannot explain, she must have.
As Alice discovers innocently when she burns herself with a curling iron, when either of the two of them hurt themselves in the presence of the titular object… tons of money appears in the teapot -- the harder the injury, the more money. As teased in our The Brass Teapot exclusive clip, they soon learn that the pain of others produces even more money!
So, what on earth could be the problem?
Well, there are issues on two fronts. There are a pair of Hasidic Jews who keep raiding their home and stealing the money, claiming that it is theirs as their mother (who Alice stole the teapot from in that antique shop) smuggled it out of a concentration camp in World War II.
Also, there is a Chinese man who claims to be an expert on the teapot. He is sure that no good can come of it, and that there is a millennia of examples in history where gifts of money eventually turned evil.
Previewed in The Brass Teapot trailer, this is a black comedy of the highest order. There is something hilarious about these two hurting themselves for profit. When they learn that emotional scarring leads to even more cash, that is when the comic nature turns dark. After all, physical scars may heal… emotional ones do not.
The Brass Teapot is not necessarily a film that is a must-see. If dark comic tones are your cup of tea, the film is entertaining and enlightening. Above all else, our The Brass Teapot review states that the film shows off why Temple is one of our great up-and-coming actresses.