Kristen Wiig stars as Imogene a failed New York playwright awkwardly navigating the transition from Next Big Thing to Last Years News. After both her career and relationship hit the skids shes forced to make the humiliating move back home to New Jersey with her eccentric mother and younger brother (Annette Bening and Christopher Fitzgerald). Adding further insult to injury theres a strange man sleeping in her old bedroom (Darren Criss) and an even stranger man sleeping in her mothers bed (Matt Dillon). Through it all Imogene eventually realizes that as part of her rebuilding process she must finally come to love and accept both her family and her Jersey roots if shes ever going to be stable enough to get the hell away from them.
Review
Arriving at a "Where the Art Is" Foundation presentation in New York aspiring playwright Imogene Duncan (Kristen Wiig) finally grasps the fact that her boyfriend Peter (Brian Petsos) doesn't want to commit and definitely has another girl on the sly. On the cab ride home he breaks up with her this is followed by the loss of her uninspiring job at a magazine where she's intended to prosaically summarize theater pieces instead of reviewing them analytically. Although truly depressed Imogene invents a fake suicide scenario in an attempt to gain back Peter's attention if only momentarily.
The plan backfires when she awakens in a psychiatric ward and can only be released to her mother Zelda (Annette Bening) a gamblingaddicted woman who frequently sacrificed her daughter's happiness for her own frivolities. Immediately rebelling from the idea of reuniting with her estranged parent Imogene is sedated only to wake up alone again this time in Zelda's car parked at a casino. With no one left to turn to she's resigned to moving back in with her mother living in Ocean City New Jersey where she's relegated to a fortress of sheets set up in the study. Her old room has been rented to a young graduate named Lee (Darren Criss) and Zelda has acquired a new livein beau who claims to work for the CIA possessing the hokey alias George Bousche (Matt Dillon). Her world is further turned upside down when she discovers that her father Maxwell P. Duncan (Bob Balaban) a man she was led to believe had died when she was young is still alive and a successful author in New York.
Wiig once again plays the downtrodden out of luck financially unsound middleaged woman with a completely mediocre existence. She has no prospects background hope for the future or significant romantic interests struggling to communicate with humanity and incorrectly assuming that desperation will sprout opportunities. Her friends are younger prettier and more prosperous. She's a total underdog continually surrounded by people that are bad for her. She's an adult who can't quite cut it as an adult. But could it be that all she really needs is an attitude adjustment Her unlikely association with Peter brimming with confidence enthusiasm and prideful risktaking is the therapeutic energy necessary to jumpstart her transformation.
Her mission to find her lost father is an opportunity to reconnect with family – while determining the importance of relationships and support. Those with wellmeaning but deceitful motives evolve into the more beneficial network while the comfort and sustenance she's certain she'll find from accomplished advantageous companions remains cheerlessly slippery. Though the premise is amusing Wiig's hysteria resorts to slapstickoriented comic routines with embarrassment and ridicule as her constant sidekicks. The humor is bleak and dejecting yet funny in a darkly quirky way not unlike the appeal of ȫridesmaids" with its steadily increasing entertainment value through negative ordeals. Choosing friends poorly disillusionment wasted potential second chances and finding contentment in unexpected values are lingering notions that reveal revelations about goals and love. The originality might be lacking but the message is sweet and simple (despite a bevy of unfortunate events keeping the tone woebegone) highlighted by a superbly written part for Christopher Fitzgerald as Ralph Imogene's awkward brother who symbolically crafts a mollusklike shell of bulletproof metal for protection in harrowing social situations. He's the equivalent to Melissa McCarthy's Megan in ȫridesmaids" arranged in a subtler more poignant form of emotional foundation.
The Massie Twins (GoneWithTheTwins.com)