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Girl Most Likely

1/10

Stars: Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon, Darren Criss, Natasha Lyonne, Christopher Fitzgerald, Brian Petsos, Bob Balaban, June Diane Raphael

Director: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini

An embarrassing failure for talented funny-girl Wiig, here attempting a sort of poignant comedy-drama. Agony to be with, the film is desperately unfunny and, though the star tries hard, almost none of it works. Characters are just sufficiently removed from life as to be virtually devoid of interest.

Wiig plays Imogene, a failed playwright whose partner tells her he's leaving her on the night before she loses her job into the bargain. Feigning suicide and writing a florid farewell note, Imogene phones her ex (Petsos) and begs him to save her. Hours pass and she gets so bored she really takes the pills, which takes some swallowing in more ways than one.

Pumped out in hospital, she's released in the custody of her ditzy mother (Bening) and whisked off to mom's ramshackle house in Ocean Bay - a sort of fictitious Atlantic City - where mom lives with her boyfriend George Bouche (Dillon), an alleged undercover CIA agent, Imogene's simple-minded brother Ralph (Fitzgerald), who loves crabs and is making a shellsuit to protect him from harm, and lodger Lee (Glee star Criss) who takes the forlorn Imogene on a wild night out during which the teetotal writer inevitably gets drunk.

This may sound like a fun blend of laughter and tears, but the screenplay is flat and the two directors show a woeful lack of comic timing; like Imogene you just want the ordeal to end. Never mind, Wiig's next, Loveship Hateship, looks much more promising.

David Quinlan

USA 2012. UK Distributor: Lionsgate. Colour by deluxe.
103 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 12A.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 1.

Review date: 22 Sep 2013