This is Kristen Wiig’s big follow-up to Bridesmaids (the fluke runaway hit that critics loved beyond reason) and it’s a flop. I actually didn’t hate the movie, but plenty of critics did. It has an abysmal 15 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (for an indie film, that’s as rough as it gets) and I know it won’t do anything remotely close to Bridesmaids box office. When I say “remotely close” I mean it’ll be lucky to do 1 percent of what that film did globally, and it got stomped this weekend by Fruitvale Station, a film playing in less than 10 percent of the theaters this is.
The film is the same as Bridesmaids in that a rootless young woman (Wiig again) goes through major upheaval as her live-in boyfriend dumps her, she loses her job, is put in jeopardy with her more upwardly mobile friends, and has to move back in with her mother after a pseudo-suicide attempt engineered to gain enough sympathy to get her boyfriend back with her. Annette Benning plays her mom, her brother is such a home-body he’s made a crab suit so you can take home with you, Matt Dillon plays her mom’s boyfriend, and Darren Criss is the younger guy her mom is renting a room to.
What Works: Although no other critics seemed to notice it, Wiig is actually a more accomplished actress here than she was in Bridesmaids. Whereas that performance was mostly defensive and shrill, she exposes unexpected layers of vulnerability and warmth here. It’s not just softening her nearly-clinical edge, it’s letting the armor drop just enough to expose a more fully rounded person beneath it. It’s a shame more didn’t see it, and the love scenes between her and Criss (a less likely movie couple couldn’t be cooked up in a lab experiment) aren’t as unconvincing as you’d think. And a last-minute twist involving Matt Dillon’s character is just wild enough to inject some fun into the movie.
What Doesn’t Work: The structure of “a young, flighty woman loses it all…then slowly rebuilds it by returning home” is a familiar one, and there are too many conventional elements here, despite occasional flashes of absurdist humor. Annette Benning continues to chew the scenery in one of her trashy, over-the-top mother roles, and the script never gains real momentum. Scenes come and go, but there’s no spark. The audience watched, and I didn’t see anyone leave early, but there’s just not enough interesting things going on to really hold the film together.
What I Would Have Done Differently: It’s awfully hard to make an “underachiever has to go home again” movie feel fresh, so why even bother?