The Stress is Killing Me (2025) Movie Review: Nostalgia-dipped mid-life crisis comedy is loosely bound and unfunny

Tom Carroll’s “The Stress is Killing Me” stems from a great idea. I mean, all of us have re-evaluated our lives at some point, imagining what it would be like if we had taken a career path that we truly wanted to take when we were young. So, when Carroll offers his characters another chance at life – even if it is for a brief period of time, you’d expect things to be light, breezy, and fun. And while to some extent they are, the writer/director’s failure to capitalize on that premise cannot be forgiven. 

A lot of it depends on how the narrative is held together. At first, we are introduced to Kiki (Carly Christopher) – a lawyer stressfully driving down with her friend Marcie (Lisa Lucas) to their University’s 20-year reunion. The hot-shot lawyer is anxious because she will be meeting her college boyfriend Jason (Grayson Berry) – the one she let go of back then and now regrets. At first, things are awkward, but when their old group of 8 friends sit down to reminisce about their times together and the common thread of everyone hating their current jobs comes up, things become pretty normal and cheery. 

However, as everyone is about to leave, college sweethearts and now husband and wife Sue (April Hartman) and Todd Boyd (Theron LaFountain) who helped curate the reunion announce that they have booked the venue for an entire week and all of them are welcome to stay in the lavish villa if, for the entirety of their stay there, try to take up hobbies (or jobs) that they actually wanted to do in their lives. One of them wants to be a teacher, the other a yoga instructor, and while jobs like being a detective or a priest might sound like they would need more than a week to be nuanced enough, we take the premise on it’s face value. And like us, the characters – who actually feel like real friends thanks to the wonderful rapport these actors are able to build with each other, also take the idea at its face value and go with the flow.

Now, Carroll who is making his directorial debut here has an eye for how to shoot these friends together. Capturing the euphoria and nostalgia of a time that was fun and without any stress while also peppering it with heartwarming moments is not easy. For what’s it worth, trying to do that with a huge cast is reason enough to laud Carroll’s courage. However, there is not a single note-worthy character here that would make any of the happenings or mishappenings the least bit memorable. It does not help that Carroll is unable to create even a single moment beyond the interesting premise that gives life to any of these badly stitched sketches that are flattened out to such an extent that there is no cohesion in the narrative whatsoever. The music choices and the cinematographic choices are so badly drawn out that the somewhat handsome production value is reduced to overlite sequences in the sun – with the yellow light glittering on the actors’ faces. 

“The Stress is Killing Me” idea of a midlife crisis is bound to just sex and career. It does not believe in staying with its characters and thus keeps throwing them into awkward scenes that feel like they are improvised by some AD  who was present on set. Now, the film is of course about letting one’s guard down and just allowing ourselves to have some fun, but the film is so hell-bent on being funny that the profound idea that it could have explored is left to ripen in the background as we are assaulted with one unfunny sequence after the other. 

The actors try their best but “The Stress is Killing Me” is unnecessarily long and like most of us – doesn’t know what to do with itself. 

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