Spin Me Round

In the lightest and sometimes strangest comedy of the year, Spin Me Round, a manager of Italian Grille (think Olive Garden), Amber (Alison Brie), wins a trip to a corporate immersion program in Italy, enthusiastic about vacating her humdrum life in Bakersfield, Ca. Other winner managers of varying eccentricities are played by top-drawer comic actors Tim Heidecker, Debby Ryan, Zach Woods, Ayden Mayeri, and Molly Shannon.

Her fantasies are of adventure and maybe hookup, maybe love. She gets all three but not as innocent as she thought they might be. Although this is a whimsical comedy, underneath lies writer/director Jeff Baena and writer Alison Brie's satire of middle-class naivete, ambitions, and the plague of sexual harassment. We can best understand the depression of a pandemic that seemed to deflate our most wishful sailing to a place of dreams.

Given that the exciting adventure of her life may be applying a commercial Alfredo sauce at work to pasta and seeing it "spin around" the microwave, it's easy to see her being a victim of the rich, handsome chain owner, Nick (Alessandro Nivola). That she doesn't see lust in the eyes of American expats at a party, who view her as easy pickings, is about the best indicator of her vulnerability.

That she doesn't pick up on the cheesy way the party host (Fred Amisen) lip-synchs to "The Lady in Red" as she enters the party in her crimson gown is a further hint that Spin Me Around is light fare, and she is not prepared for the absurdity.

With the equally stereotypical Euro-thriller music from composer Pino Donagio, the audience is prepared for the satire of post-Fellini decadence with a dash of humor. The Agatha Christie-like murder speculations lend a further light tone to a story that could have gone into The Twilight Zone.

Spin Me Around is a beautifully photographed bit of fluff, just right for the end of the summer, a pause to reflect on our dreams as they invariably disappoint. Reality bites.

I liked the concept of the movie, but the tone was all over the place. I don't think the filmmaker knew what kind of movie they wanted to make, which in the end turned into a comedy but has all of these confusing twists and turns in between.

I thought Alessandro Nivola was perfectly cast as Nick, but then he goes to a party and introduces Amber to Ricky, played by...Fred Armisen, whose presence immediately made the movie feel like a TV Show.

I did enjoy the ending. I'm usually not much for interpretive endings, but for once I feel like I understood it. The movie was very messy up to that point, but I don't think I would have had the context to understand the ending without that messiness?

I don't know how I feel about this movie. I really don't.

The world's DUMBEST 35 year old woman goes on a corporate mandated trip to Italy which seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. At first, Amber's plans and assumptions are within the range of normal: she thinks going to Italy even for her lame chain restaurant (which is obviously a place that rhymes with Bolive Zarden) is going to be enriching and fun. Instead, she's stuffed away with other worker drones in an ugly old motel that is located conveniently behind the CEOs lush villa misleadingly advertised in the pamphlet. They awaken on the first day to the sorts of trainings that could have just as easily have been done in the conference room of a Hilton in Bakersfield. What's more, is that the entire group is warned that legally they're not allowed to explore on their own even at night because "Italy is dangerous" and the only time they'll actually be enjoying their journey to a foreign country are on structured group field trips to places like farmer's markets.

At this point, you can't really blame her for befriending a glamorously cool but slightly evil Aubrey Plaza decked out in Italian designer clothes and playing the role of the CEOs much-beleagured personal assistant, Kat. But you start to worry about how well her brain is functioning when she doesn't get even a tiny bit suspicious when Kat drops her off at the CEO's yacht, and drives away while millionaire Nick goes about the most obvious narcissistic sexual harassment any corporate jerk of a boss could muster. Amber falls for it hook, line and sinker as though she's a 20 year old girl who has never been in a real adult relationship with a man before. Utterly starry eyed and besotted, Amber allows Nick to buy her a wildly expensive dress even as Kat clearly says "prostituta" to the sales woman in the shop while discussing the price. Upon arriving to Nick's party, everyone starts kissing Amber or dancing with her, and telling her how open-minded she is. OBVIOUSLY Nick is a creep who is used to manipulating women with money who has invited Amber to an orgy, and everyone except her knows it.

Kat takes pity on Amber, and speedily drives her away from the impending sexcapades and instead takes her out to a dine and dash gourmet meal, drinks and dancing before making out with Amber in the alley way. At this point in the movie, I'm all for it - I would have loved nothing more than for this strange Italian vacation to turn into a bisexual romance starring Aubrey Plaza. Instead, Amber nervously backs off, continues to pine over Nick and hold him blameless, at which point laugh-out-loud chaos ensues.

But even though it's funny, it's just hard to watch the movie as an adult and not realize what a dummy Amber is, and how critical her internalized misogyny and childish naivete are to the entire plot of the film. I don't know who needs to see this film, but it probably wasn't me. I was hoping for a lot more of Aubrey Plaza.

You know those movies that start out strong and build up a compelling plot, only to lose themselves in the final quarter and go down a convoluted road? This is one of those movies.

The first 2/3 is actually really interesting. It's sort of similar to "don't worry darling"- a seemingly normal universe that gets more and more absurd as time goes on. It's a comedy, mystery, thriller, and romance all wrapped into one.

And then- it's ruined by a rather flat ending. It feels like someone just didn't write an ending. I think this had the potential to be really great, but squandered it. Ultimately, only watch this if you're okay with a good journey but bad destination.

Near to the end, the Alison Brie character says "WTF is going on?" and most viewers will have asked the same thing about an hour earlier. The film starts off fairly predictably but once the action moves to Tuscany, no-one, except the above mentioned character, behaves like normal people behave. And not in a funny, zany-comedy way, they simply become progressively more weird.

OK, you think, at any moment now, the hidden under-story will reveal itself and things will start to make sense. But it doesn't, the plot just becomes increasingly illogical, as if the writers (Brie included) concocted it one Saturday evening after several bottles of wine, with no idea how the story would end.

Having said all that, it's not so frustrating that you don't see it through to the finale, it is set in Italy in the sunshine after all. But you will probably stare at the closing credits, as I did, thinking so what was that all about?