Notice to Quit

“Notice to Quit’s comfort level with characters of color comes into sharp focus in one particular scene.”

Title: Notice to Quit (2024)
Director: Simon Hacker 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Simon Hacker 👨🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3.25/5

In a solidly built feature debut by writer-director Simon Hacker, Notice to Quit follows a simple premise: A deadbeat dad who hasn’t seen his daughter in months suddenly finds himself saddled with her care. Said daughter, 10-year-old Anna (Kasey Bella Suarez), is distraught over her and her mom’s impending move from New York City to Florida (a “swamp,” Anna gripes). On the child’s last day in the city, she runs away to spend time with her dad, Andy (Michael Zegen).

The emotional beats of this fast-paced dramedy won’t surprise anyone. Across genres, from kids’ movie Despicable Me (2010) to the grittier Logan (2017), a cantankerous father figure is forced into babysitting a precocious young girl before softening towards her by film’s end. In Notice to Quit, washed up rental agent/hustler Andy and whipsmart Anna play their roles dutifully.

While it’s not the familiar plot that carries this film, Hacker deftly creates a bursting love letter to working class New Yorkers, in all their brash and unscrupulous swagger. Viewers find themselves thrown onto a roller coaster ride of chaos and city hijinks, recalling the punishing pace of Uncut Gems (but without the debilitating sense of dread). From finding a cockroach in a diner to arguing with your gruff-but-secretly-kind immigrant landlord, to having your financial solvency center around the city’s housing market, the movie taps into a very real New York experience—and splashes it on screen for audiences to laugh at (or commiserate with).

Gender: 3.5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Although Anna has a headlining role with plenty of screentime, Hacker clearly has his sights set on main character Andy. It’s Andy’s hectic day we follow, and Anna is simply the comet that’s come crashing into his punishing routine of showing apartments and ducking shady colleagues to whom he owes money. Anna does have a positive role as a kid who’s balanced as both street-smart yet vulnerable, but she remains two-dimensional throughout the film.

In a key role (albeit one that’s mostly offscreen), Anna’s mom Liz (Isabel Arraiza) avoids the tiresome stereotypes often applied to the exes of main male characters. Sure, she does gripe about Andy being a useless father, but viewers are given good reason to agree with her. (Andy is a mess.) So many scripts subtly chastise women for working full time, seen in Mrs. Doubtfire’s (1993) judgment of Sally Field’s career-oriented character, not to mention just about the entirety of the Christmas movie catalog. Notice to Quit never falls into the trope of suggesting that Liz is somehow overbearing, or needs to change.

But in the end, the cast is filled mostly with men. Brokers, butchers, landlords, doormen—working class New York looks like a man’s world. The only minor characters we see with more gender balance appear in expected places: caregivers such as Liz, who works as a hospital nurse, and Anna’s babysitter Maria (Feiga Martinez), plus a smattering of former and would-be tenants looking to rent from Andy. On the plus side, this depiction of the city doesn’t ring untrue; it just makes for another movie that doesn’t bother sketching outside gender conventions.

Race: 4/5

On the other hand, even with its white main character, Notice to Quit embraces the racial and ethnic diversity of its setting through supporting and background roles. This isn’t Sex and the City’s whitewashed brunch utopia, nor is this the “urban” (read: Black and Latino) hellscape regurgitated by so many movies centering around white leads from the 1980s and ‘90s. Having lived in New York City myself for over a decade, it’s hard to specify what makes Notice to Quit’s racial inclusivity so potent beyond the fact that it just “feels right.”

In the most prominent roles for people of color, Latina Suarez and Puerto Rican Arraiza play Anna and Liz, respectively. Their ethnicities are naturally woven into the film: Whether it’s speaking occasional Spanish, to Liz’s no-nonsense but loving approach to parenting Anna, cultural markers feel neither exotified nor ignored. Hacker’s comfort level around this comes into sharp focus when Anna translates for a man speaking Spanish to Andy. It’s a small but effective bit of scripting that puts control in the hands of Latinos as Andy is left out of the conversation—a subtle power shift that mirrors how, in most parts of New York City, white people are in the minority. Even if this only happens briefly, it’s a positive (and realistic) setup that doesn’t resort to dull cliches about Latinos being potentially violent or “scary” in order for them to briefly have the upper hand around a white protagonist.

Mediaversity Grade: B- 3.58/5

For a simplistic story about a guy struggling to balance the demands of work and family, Notice to Quit stands out more for its Technicolor rendering of New York City, and the way it paints its hustlers with humor and affection. As lead actor Zegen succinctly puts it himself, “It's not a deep movie. It's just a good time.”

Like Notice to Quit? Try these other titles that eat, sleep, and breathe New York City.

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Grade: BLiSeptember 30, 2024