A surreal suburban satire in the image of absurdist shows like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and The Mighty Boosh, it’s hard to state how bizarre everyday life is in Greener Grass. Starring writer/directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe as two competing soccer moms, wanting a baby, Jill (DeBoer) gives her friend Lisa (Luebbe) her own newly born, and then everything else starts to fall away around her too.

I really wanted to like the film, I like absurdist comedy, I like films that try something different, but everything about this world fell flat and I barely managed a chuckle throughout the entire 101-minute running time. Even star of the cast, Beck Bennett, so excellent on SNL really struggles here.

Once the weird starts, it just keeps coming at 100mph. There’s a kid who turns into a dog, someone who sticks a volleyball up her dress in an effort to convince everyone she’s pregnant, but the surreal world DeBoer and Luebbe have created just isn’t funny. Expanding a 15-minute short, unfortunately Greener Grass doesn’t know how to turn a skit into a something resembling a plot. No doubt a lot of e ffort into crating this strange creation – DeBoer and Luebbe definitely score an A+ for weird – but weird doesn’t always equal comedy, and this film is stark proof to that end.

But things are about to change. When her dad cuts her off, Sasha quickly realises how reliant she was on the family fund. Meetings about her clothing designs aren’t going well, and her so-called friends suddenly aren’t so interested when she isn’t flashing her cheque book, ultimately she’s given a choice; back to to the family home in China and chip in on the family business, or be cut off forever. The next day, she’s on a plan back to Hong Kong.

A story of culture clashes and family drama, Sasha struggles to adapt to the change of pace at the family-owned toy factory, as Go Back To China charts Sasha’s struggle to adapt to the change of pace, and new responsibility.

But as Sasha tries to forge new relationships with her father and sister, the film unfortunately struggles to find a deeper meaning too. Though Go Back to China is a semi-autobiographical tale from writer/director Emily Ting – she too went back to China from the US, to help out in the very same factory where much of the film is shot – the film feels oddly impersonal. The dialogue is quite simplistic and you can predict every plot point long before the narrative takes hold. It’s strange, because for a film with quite a unique story, the heartfelt care and attention that clearly went into crafting every scene, the end result is unfortunately quite bland.

On-screen Anna Akana and Lynn Chen are exce llent though, and somewhere inside Go Back to China there is a great story trying to fight its way out, I just don’t think this film hit the heights it set out to achieve.

So not sure what to expect, they meet with the family lawyer who presents just one item, a sword. But not just any old sword, Cynthia’s grandfather claimed it proves that the South won the Civil War.

Hoping to sell the sword for a quick buck, the couple team up with local pawn shop owner (Marc Maron) and his lacklustre assistant (Jon Bass). The foursome agree the split the profits, and a few internet rabbit holes later, find a potential buyer who is very interested in sword’s “unique backstory”, though it’s a world they quickly regret stepping into.

Shot in a remarkable 12 days from just a scriptment by Shelton and Mike O’Brien, the dialogue is largely improvised as the meandering film both lives by, and dies by, the sword (no pun intended).

Where it works, and the snappy cast are let loose in a scene to fantastic effect, the film raises more than a few laughs and really entertains in scenes of relative isolation. But it struggles to maintain a strong sense of narrative in between, feeling quite loose and baggy where the audience sometimes needed to be swept along from point to point.

Much of the film is watching the foursome talking, scheming, bickering. And while I could watch the excellent cast for hours as they go back and forth (Jon Bass is particularly excellent), for a narrative film, they lack that extra depth, a second side of the film alongside the relative farce of the sword. It didn’t need to be anything earth shattering, just somewhere else to go too.

Nevertheless this is a subject area ripe for play, and while Sword of Truth is hardly a take-down of conspiracy theorists and revisionist history, it pokes fun as those elements of society with excellent effect. And there’s no doubt you’re rooting for the ragtag foursome when they find themselves in a little too deep with some particularly bizarre characters.

Sword of Truth is not a total success, but it’s cer tainly not a failure either. And when you consider the remarkable production timeline, Shelton deserves great credit for pulling together such entertaining, if slightly leggy, farce.