A day in the ‘Park’ finally settles down

A flotilla of L.A. residents gather in an unlandscaped recreation area in Baldwin Hills to canoodle, attempt suicide, plot revenge and dig into one another’s psyches in writer-director Kurt Voelker’s high-spirited if slight comedy, “Park.”

Set almost entirely in and around a quartet of vehicles parked on the parched bluffs southwest of downtown, the film’s expediently connected vignettes are played out as loud and broad farce with flurries of social commentary but work best when Voelker gets around to humanizing some of his characters at the 11th hour.

Ian (David Fenner) is a 36-year-old, romantically challenged dog groomer who pilots his company truck to the park thinking he is about to get lucky with his spitfire Polish co-worker Krysta (Izabella Miko). He’s quickly disappointed when he learns that her French maid get-up is for her rendezvous with pompous, luxury SUV-driving attorney Dennis, played with greasy disingenuousness by William Baldwin.

Before his newly earned cuckold status settles in, Ian is startled by a rap on his window by April (Dagney Kerr), who pauses her heartbreakingly inept suicide attempts to borrow a little lubricant. Soon the two are commiserating about their miserable lives in the confines of April’s Volkswagen bug as gas fumes seep in through the hose helpfully provided by Ian.

As Krysta begins naughtily scrubbing Dennis’ overstuffed leather seats, his wife (Ricki Lake) and her best friend (Cheri Oteri) pull up to observe, plot revenge and mull the fate of women of a certain age.

The main cast is rounded out by a quartet of workers from a tech company who arrive in a van, ostensibly to have themselves a picnic in the park. Under this pretext, Nathan (Trent Ford), a smooth-talking freethinker, and his sidekick (Maulik Pancholy) have dragged along a pair of comely co-workers (Anne Dudek and Melanie Lynskey) but have something a little more liberating on their minds.

There are plenty of comedic misfires, with jokes and physical gags falling flat for minutes on end, but Voelker cannily juggles the storylines and location limitations with resourceful direction and never allows the film to get dull. A peppy pop song score and dead-on casting make “Park” more entertaining than it probably has any right to be.

Initially, the foursome in the van are the most interesting, with Voelker investing a little more in sketching out their characters, but he seems to run out of ideas once they begin confronting each other and their storyline stalls. Surprisingly, it’s Lake and Oteri, originally dealt the slightest hands, who turn on the charm in the late scenes and inject the film with some much-needed pathos.

kevin.crust@latimes.com

“Park.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.