Jackrabbit Knows the Value of a Good Liar

George (Kuhoo Verma) has barely made it to her first morning at a new investigative reporting job when she notices something is up. A newly branded water bottle. Whiteboard dust on her boss’s sleeve, the residue of a presentation. A slightly more formal outfit. Also, perhaps less impressively, the sale announcement is still open on her new boss’s computer screen.

George lays out the clues. Her boss agrees: this is exactly the eye they hired her for. Unfortunately, the merger has just eliminated the investigative job she moved to New York to take.

Writer-director Ballard C. Boyd gives George a touch of Sherlock Holmes, then arranges what may be the least compatible roommate assignment in New York. Avery (Taylor Ortega), Trish’s other best friend, is a struggling actress whose relationship to truth is considerably more improvisational. Trish (Soojeong Son), George’s best friend since middle school, is certain this will be fine.

Before George knows who Avery is, she encounters her at a bar spinning a very convincing story about an elderly neighbor, a hospital visit, and the phone she supposedly left at home. The story earns Avery a sympathetic bartender and a whiskey, which she promptly makes a double. George is sympathetic too, right up until she notices that Avery is holding the phone she claimed she did not have.

Investigative-reporter mode takes over.

By the time Trish arrives, delighted that her two best friends have already met, the introductions have progressed to moral condemnation.

They move in together anyway.

Sharing Trish’s attention proves almost as irritating as sharing the apartment, and the truce does not survive experimental theater, mismatched habits, and one expensive bottle of medication that ends up in the trash. Eventually Avery decides the rent money is not worth quite this much togetherness and gives George until the end of the month to move out.

Then Trish stops answering her phone.

Concern becomes fear, and the two women set out together, united by the one person each would do almost anything for. The search sends them across New York and into the company of people with increasingly peculiar stories.

George can spot the detail that does not fit. Avery can invent whatever story gets them through the next door.

The quality George finds most objectionable in her new roommate turns out to be one of the investigation’s most useful tools.

Boyd has as much fun with the women’s mistaken impressions of one another as with the mystery itself. Avery proves more capable than George initially gives her credit for, and Trish’s apparently tidy life develops some unexpected wrinkles. The dialogue stays funny and combative as affection creeps in. Caring about the same person once made George and Avery rivals; now it gives them a reason to keep choosing the same direction.

Every so often, Jackrabbit stretches plausibility far enough that you can feel it stretching. A few choices land more like the machinery of a comic mystery than something these women would naturally do. It is a small reservation, and the film usually gets away with it because the dialogue is quick, the characters are good company, and the relationships keep changing underneath the investigation.

The clever connections make the detours worthwhile. Even the title earns a satisfying little payoff.

For adults who like their whodunits playful, mouthy and a little disreputable, Jackrabbit is very good company.