I don’t really think
people have lackadaisical impressions of Kristen Wiig; you either love her and
think she was one of the best parts of Saturday Night Live and a revelation in
Bridesmaids, or you think her characters on SNL were repetitive and she herself
somewhat overrated. There’s a strict divide, I think, and it won’t be helped by Girl Most Likely, Wiig’s first starring role since 2010. Your reactions will
either be, “Oh, this is only passable and tolerable because of Wiig’s charisma,”
or … Well, actually, there is no “or” option, because this movie isn’t going to
attract people who don’t like Wiig. She’s the only reason to see
Because otherwise, what
you’re getting is a fairly standard romantic comedy that suggests, as almost
all of these genre films do, that a woman in her 30s is stuck in an inevitable
existential crisis that will challenge her sense of femininity, identity, and
selfhood. And sure, Darren Criss from Glee is in this one, being adorable and
charming and overall the handsome devil he is, but there is very little to
tweak this formula. These are quirky characters in a quirky world doing quirky
things and realizing that they all love each other for that very quirkiness.
Quirk! It’s keeping indie films afloat.
Girl Most Likely, written by Michelle Morgan and directed by Shari Springer Berman and
Robert Pulcini, focuses on Imogene (Wiig), a former playwright who has faded
into obscurity after her successful debut. Although she received a grant to
support the writing of her follow-up, things just never gelled, and so years
later she’s stuck in regret, writing about other people’s Broadway productions,
living with a jerk boyfriend who won’t marry her, and surrounded by friends who
critique her clothes and her personality and her entire life. New York City isn’t
all Imogene expected it to be, and when she gets fired from her job and dumped
by her boyfriend on the same day, she’s at a loss for what’s next. A suicide
attempt? OK!
But this isn’t your typically serious endeavor; it’s just Imogene
trying to get her boyfriend’s attention (she only takes one pill).
Nevertheless, everyone else freaks out about it, eventually leading to Imogene
being placed on 72-hour suicide watch—under the supervision of her
gambling-addicted, white trash mother Zelda (Annette Bening), whom Imogene has
been avoiding for the majority of her adult life. Yet going back to Ocean City,
New Jersey, with her mother is Imogene’s only option, and so she’s thrust back
into this world, with her mom’s obliviousness; her mother’s boyfriend George’s
(Matt Dillon) delusions of being a CIA agent; and her brother Ralph’s (Christopher
Fitzgerald) bizarreness. It’s hard to connect with your sibling when he’s more
interested in building a crab-like exoskeleton for himself than getting to know
what’s going on in your life.
And so Imogene’s only option at any kind of relatable
companionship is Lee (Criss), an Ivy Leaguer who went to Yale but now devotes
his passion to a Backstreet Boys cover band. Dressed in all-white, exactly like
the ‘90s group, he performs at a nightclub, doesn’t care what people think, and
is generally doing the damn thing—exactly what Imogene can’t bring herself to
do. So caught up in her frustrations against her mother and against herself,
Imogene just can’t figure out who she is. Can Lee help her do that? Or should
she be doing it all by herself?
The problem with all this is, of course, that even great
performances can’t completely overshadow the film’s formulaic nature. As much
as Wiig is game for anything, from playing a frazzled, underworked New Yorker
to a more calmed-down beachcomber, the arc of her character is pretty expected;
once Criss’s Lee is introduced, you know you’ll sleep together, you know he’ll
teach her to trust her instincts and be more impulsive, you know the film will
find ways to throw them together. A similar ho-humness is present in the
characters of George and Ralph, who are bizarre for no reason whatsoever. Is
George insane, to be so stuck to the idea of working for the CIA? Does Ralph
have some kind of mental illness? The answers we want as viewers don’t ever
really appear.
The biggest issue with Girl Most Likely, then, is that it
likes to build characters toward what it considers to be funny moments without
any real emotional development or investment, and so there’s this distance for
us as the audience as we look for more substance than would be present in a typical
romantic comedy about a woman who might be a little bit crazy. But Girl Most Likely isn’t willing to take chances, even if Wiig is, and that’s a
disappointment. It’s not an insufferable film, but it’s buried under what could
have been.
