J Paul Johnson
In The Fun-Raiser, premiering at the 2025 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, what can go wrong, does. In Port City (read: Duluth, Minnesota), married couple Carson and Crystal are at risk of losing the performing arts charter high school they run together. So, in showbiz parlance they “put on a show,” one intended to raise enough funds to keep their struggling school alive. They face no shortage of obstacles, especially when their planned venue falls through and they have to hold the event at their dilapidated hockey-arena-turned-school—these include a leaky roof, a flammable cake, a no-show celebrity, potential food poisoning, some serious pre-game drinking, and a cast of wacky supporting characters that could populate a Christopher Guest mockumentary.
It’s all to the good, though. Filmmaker duo writer-director Wyatt McDill and producer Megan Huber’s comedy has nothing but affection for those who dedicate their lives to the performing arts, even when doing so presents challenges like the above. Like in their earlier Hollywood Fringe, there’s the sense that they love and embrace their fictional characters despite their very clear failings and foibles.
Start, for instance, with Carson Branson (Brian Sutherland) and his wife Crystal (Shana Berg), who run The Limdahl School of The Performing Arts. Neither has any discernible talent and both face their inner demons: Carson a variety of physical and emotional ailments, Crystal a propensity to problem-solve with a nip or two (or three or six) too early in the day. With the school’s namesake, Steve Limdahl, in jail for embezzlement, the two seem ill-prepared to manage a successful fund-raiser.
Their plan is to save the school and the future of its creative students by wowing Port City’s glitterati (such as they are) with a gala event showing off their charge’s talents and even flying in the town’s famous son—film star Trey Crock (Toussaint Morrison), who was born there, even if he left at age three. But the events of The Fun-Raiser (the not-at-all-too-cleverly titled event itself) are a comedy of errors. Carson, unsurprisingly, ends up hospitalized. Their nervous-Nellie event planner quits in a fit of pique. Crystal’s anxieties have her hitting the drink a few hours too early. The talent, such as it is, seems ill-prepared for their big moment, if they manage to make it to the show at all. The celebrated Port City guests are treated to rickety folding chairs, food served on the floor, and Crystal’s drunken fundraising entreaties. And the pièce de résistance—a fragile cake filled with pyrotechnics—looms large as a threat to bring the entire event down in flames.
Even so, all’s well that ends well. McDill and Huber’s coterie of characters isn’t just here for comedy’s sake. For all their failings, they love the arts and they love performance. As teen LaLa Steele (Ella Pearl-Levy) tells her blue-collar dad Punch (David Tufford): “You watch seven hours of tv a day. Don’t you get the connection?” Hers is a smart, sharp rejoinder to those who think the arts don’t matter, but are constantly and gleefully consuming the content artists produce. LaLa gets her big moment to perform, and she doesn’t disappoint with a lively song and dance delighting the crowd. Meanwhile, Trey Crock puts on his game face, wooing the attending philanthropists with all the schmoozy charm a Hollywooder can muster, and teacher Anita Handley (Kasper) keeps it all together with her game face and grim determination.
The focus of The Fun-Raiser is physical comedy, to be sure, but it’s a comedy with a real heart and more than that, a point: the arts are for everyone and they need are support. As indie filmmakers devoted to the cause, McDill and Huber know and surely have lived that as well as anyone. Their characters might not all have what it takes for Trey-Crock levels of Hollywood success, but they all have heart, and that’s enough to make The Fun-Raiser a rousing, if more than a little haphazard, success.
