The first-time actor Michael Strassner’s father saw “The Baltimorons,” at a Texas film festival last March, he kept pointing out the actors he knew personally (“Look, there’s Dan! Look, there’s Drew!”) until his son finally had to remind him, “Dad, this is not a private screening.”

When Strassner’s mother first caught a glimpse of herself in “The Baltimorons” at the same event, she couldn’t suppress a startled, “Oh! Oh!” — she was so focused on watching her son make his debut as a movie star she had temporarily forgotten she had a small role in the film herself.

A local audience seeing “The Baltimorons” local premiere at the Senator Theatre on Sept. 10 might find themselves expressing a similar response: “Look, there’s the Key Bridge! Look, there’s the Washington Monument! Look, there are the Christmas lights on 34th Street! Oh! Oh!”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and tourism officials will likely love “The Baltimorons” — and they should.

The movie, which stars the Baltimore-born Strassner and was directed by Jay Duplass, is an unconventional romantic comedy that has already won several film festival awards and is shaping up to be one of the sleeper hits of 2025. It has the potential to elevate the 36-year-old Strassner, who possesses an eccentric but powerful charisma, into something approaching a household name.

Despite its affectionately insulting title, the movie is an unabashed love letter to Baltimore, a welcome corrective to the barrage of recent insults from President Donald Trump, who has derided the city and its inhabitants as a crime-ridden “hellhole” and a “horrible, horrible deathbed.”

“The Baltimorons” represents Duplass’ return to directing a feature film for the first time in 14 years, and what a treat it is. He specializes in quiet little stories rooted in real life about flawed but improbably charming and relatable people, and “The Baltimorons” is very much cast in that mold.

The romance in this comedy is an oddball May-December pairing. Cliff (Strassner) is a recovering alcoholic who is reluctantly contemplating becoming a mortgage broker. He fears that a career in improvisational comedy — a calling at which he excels — is incompatible with his newly acquired and hard-won sobriety.

Didi (Liz Larsen) is a no-nonsense dentist twice Cliff’s age who finds herself suddenly unable to celebrate the holidays with her daughter and grandchild when her ex-husband decides that Christmas Eve is the perfect night to hold the reception for his wedding to a much younger woman.

A series of mishaps from a broken tooth to a towed car sends this smart, prickly duo on an odyssey that crisscrosses Baltimore from Remington to Fells Point to the Inner Harbor.

Any plot built around a Christmas Eve romance and with a soundtrack that incorporates Christmas carols undeniably runs the risk of becoming formulaic.

But “The Baltimorons” never descends into a treacly sentimentality, largely because the script co-written by Duplass and Strassner is based on its stars’ real-life struggles and isn’t afraid to visit some frightening and painful places. Even life challenges that appear hackneyed or cliched to outsiders generate strong and genuine emotions in the people living through them.

Duplass conceived of “The Baltimorons” with Strassner in mind to portray Cliff, a great, shambling, big-hearted bear of a man. Strassner is the kind of wiseacre in possession of a rare twin gift — a nimble and lightning-swift wit, and a mastery of physical comedy. (The pratfall that results in Cliff’s chipped tooth is especially fearless and funny.)

Cliff is so large — physically and in personality — that at first, it seems there is no room for anyone else. During his first scene in Didi’s dental office, he is perhaps the most annoying human on the face of the earth. He knocks on the dental office’s front door so hard he dislodges the Christmas wreath, drops his jacket on the floor instead of hanging it on the provided hook, raises a ruckus because he is terrified of needles, flirts awkwardly and won’t stop talking even as Didi attempts to pry his mouth open.

Then Cliff overhears a private phone call. The expression on his face is one of appalled anguish as he takes the situation in — not on his own behalf but for Didi. And just like that, the audience is on his side.

Duplass’ master stroke might be casting Larsen to play opposite Strassner. The chemistry between these two performers sizzles so palpably it threatens to short-circuit all those pricey outdoor Christmas lights.

Didi is a gravelly voiced aging beauty with too-thick mascara and a heart-stopping smile, a woman who, like the crabs she craves, wears a shell. It is to the New York-based Larsen’s immense credit that the audience immediately accepts her as a Baltimorean.

Didi’s lack of pretension and accent mark her as a Charm City native, in contrast to, for example, Natalie Portman’s portrayal of the 1960s Pikesville housewife-turned-journalist in “Lady in the Lake.” In the 2024 Apple TV+ miniseries, which ran last summer, Portman’s attempt at Bawlmerese sounded as though she were pinching her nose. The seven-part series was based on a novel by former Baltimore Sun reporter Laura Lippman.

(Although Larsen is a Philadelphia native, it’s worth noting that she has a Baltimore connection courtesy of the filmmaker John Waters; Larsen performed as an understudy in the original 2002 Broadway production of “Hairspray.”)

It is to the filmmakers’ credit that “The Baltimorons” doesn’t shy away from depicting the harm that its leading characters cause, however unintentionally. Cliff’s attraction to and attempts to rescue Didi result in him behaving with a thoughtlessness that hurts and stresses out his fiancee, Brittany.

Actress Olivia Luccardi delivers an open-hearted and appealing performance in what could have been a thankless role as the hero’s main buzzkill. A scene in which Brittany reacts to a crisis in her relationship by removing Cliff from her phone’s GPS location tracker is as sadly poignant as it is a comic and insightful commentary on contemporary romance.

Likewise, although composer Jordan Seigel’s soundtrack might start out with “Jingle Bells” and “O Tannenbaum,” it eases into the moody and sophisticated jazz riffs that underscore the movie’s tone.

And Towson-born cinematographer Jonathan Bregel somehow casts Baltimore in a kind of golden glow, even though most of the scenes were shot at night. He unfurls one deeply familiar and much-loved landmark after another and makes them seem hospitable and appealing — up to and including the grittier aspects of city life. Bregel even manages to make an auto impound lot in Cherry Hill look kind of beautiful.

And that, in a crustacean shell, is what “The Baltimorons” is all about.

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'THE BALTIMORONS'

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1:39

How to watch: In limited theatrical release Sept. 5

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