Imogene

This is a film for anyone who has been or knows a struggling artist. It's fantastic and at times a laugh-out-loud funny movie with a charming cast. Kristen Wiig is great and Darren Criss has never looked hotter. Easy to watch and fun and relatable on many levels.

Girl Most Likely is full of potential and just like it's heroin, a lot is expected from it. It's a great set up with an amazing cast but where it has all those strengths- it's weaknesses are equal if not stronger.

The film follows Imogene (Kristen Wiig), an unlikable whining 30 year old woman- child. Once a successful up and coming playwright, Imogene is in a major slump. After a fake suicide attempt she is released by the hospital into the hands of her gambling addicted mother (Annette Bening). Imogene is taken against her will from the comforts of New York to where she grew up, a New Jersey boardwalk town, that she hates with a passion. There she finds her mother is dating a younger man who may or may not be a CIA agent (Matt Dillon) and meets an even younger man (Darren Criss) who is renting out her childhood bedroom. When Imogene and her younger brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald) find out their long deceased father is actually alive and well, Imogene makes it her goal to find and reunite with him.

From the get go Girl Most Likely tries to instill in your brain what it is like to be Imogene by some shabby point of view camera work. In fact most of the visual appeal of the film really just rests on the expressive and handsome shoulders of young up and comer Darren Criss who, as the sexy happy go- lucky Lee, represents what Imogene should aspire to be but fails to become.

Wiig, who is known for her eccentric and outrageous characters (Saturday Night Live, Bridesmaids) plays the straight man to Imogene's kooky family. She does not do well as the straight man in this film. Imogene is grumpy, selfish and irrational. She uses her own self sabotaged failure as an excuse to be awful to her family and friends.

Dillon and Bening (The Kids Are All Right) do their best caricatures of their characters, but never really get past the shtick. However, Fitzgerald does a fine job as Imogene's sweet "special" adult brother Ralph, he is so innocently wide eyed and optimistic that you could hate Imogene for not coming to visit in years.

To be fair, there are many funny moments in Girl Most Likely. Awkward laugh out loud gold moments. The film keeps going back and forth between outrageous comedy to slow burning indie, making it an uneven ride. It's about Imogene growing up and learning to love the family she has and not the one she thinks they should be- and she does learn to love them but it's not enough. She has larger issues and the ending doesn't feel resolved for her or an audience who spends 103 minutes trying to root for her.

"Girl Most Likely" is Imogene (Kristen Wiig); a girl once likely to become the next big playwright in New York City, now she's desperately hanging on to the upper-class lifestyle convinced that it's all about who you know, where you live, and who you are with. A failed attempt of a fake suicide attempt sends Imogene back where she came from. All the way to New Jersey.

It's an indie film with a fairly minimal distribution, which generally means the film is going to try to survive on quirky comedy. Luckily, Wiig has had a decade's worth of experience doing quirky comedy on "Saturday Night Live". Also, luckily the film is more than just a quirky indie comedy. It's very much a character study, and a bit of a quarter- life crisis dramedy thrown in for good measure. Imogene doesn't know herself very well. She once knew she was a good writer, now she just thinks she's a good writer. She once knew she was better than the family she came from, now she just thinks she's better. She also thinks her life will be better if she gets to know her great and successful father whom she doesn't know.

Her home life features comedy from her weird and bizarre mother, Zelda, her weirder and more bizarre new-step-father-like figure, George, and her weird but well-intentioned younger brother, Ralph. There's also a strange man sleeping in her bed.

This strange man is Lee (Darren Criss), who is actually not strange at all. He is a young man mired in a quarter-life crisis who has rented out her room as a place to stay. He represents the romantic angle of Imogene's attempt to get her life back on track, and was actually a very welcome addition to the movie. Lee was much more sane, understanding, and more aware of his place in life than any of the characters. He was exactly the type of guy who could keep Imogene more grounded with her distorted life views.

The comedy is sweet, although at times it can become to quirky to be all that funny. The writing is good, even though at times it can be a little too self-aware to be all the great. But "Girl Most Likely" is a fairly enjoyable journey of a girl who has completely lost her way in life. It focuses on family, ambition and ties it all up with quirky comedy.

I've never reviewed a movie here before, but I'm doing it because most of what I've seen online and in my local paper were at best tepid, if not downright negative. Frankly, it is a much better comedy of manners than "Bridesmaids" was-- that one relied far too heavily on the Judd Apatow gross-out factor. (As if proving that women could be as stupid as men is some kind of feminist triumph.) Wiig's skill-- and the terrific Annette Bening's, as well-- is to tread the fine line between comic sketch exaggeration and the rueful comedy in the human condition. One of the better comedies I've seen in awhile, and deserves spreading the good word.

This movie has some good bones but what's in between isn't that great. The dialog and situations could have been funnier. A Manhattan writer gets laid off and has to go back home to New Jersey for a while.

The cast is funny and likable especially the supporting cast. Annette Benning does well as the mother with impulse control problems. Matt Dillon is always a great comedic actor and he plays Annette's boyfriend. Kristin Wiig is good but her character she plays isn't terribly sympathetic or lovable. Darren Criss of Glee plays a lodger in Annette's Ocean City home and sings a bit.

The contrast of the culture difference between arty Manhattan and Ocean City NJ is funny and could have been played up more.

Overall worth one watch for the cast but it is a little lacking in laughs.