The new film starring Kristin Wiig Welcome To Me, just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and it has me SO intrigued. I don’t want to see a frame of it before I sit down in a theater watch it unfold. Here’s what Variety‘s Justin Chang has to say in his review;
Borderline personality disorder turns out to be more of a laughing matter than it probably should be in “Welcome to Me,” a strange and often startlingly inspired media/mental-illness comedy directed by actress-filmmaker Shira Piven. After drifting into a semi-dramatic mode in her earlier Toronto-premiered indies, “Hateship Loveship” and “Girl Most Likely,” Kristen Wiig tears into a role that plays to her deadpan gifts as a woman who wins the lottery and starts her own talkshow, where she proceeds to work through her deep-seated emotional and psychological wounds on live TV. At 86 minutes, this breezily bonkers item doesn’t overstay its, er, welcome, spelling a possible warm reception in niche theatrical and VOD play.
The chief virtue of Eliot Laurence’s first-produced screenplay is not just its simple yet comically fertile premise, but also the brisk and blithely implausible manner in which it’s presented. This is not a movie that wastes any time trying to explain itself. Not long after she’s introduced watching her massive VHS collection of infomercials and “Oprah” reruns in a desert-town apartment that doesn’t appear to have seen much daylight since the mid-’90s, Alice Klieg (Wiig) finds that she’s won an $86 million jackpot. With quirky resolve, she proceeds to implement some significant life changes while her family and friends, who include her gay ex-husband (Alan Tudyk) and her stalwart BFF, Gina (Linda Cardellini), nervously offer their support from the sidelines.
I’m all in. As I said, haven’t seen a frame but I predict an Oscar nom, kids. To read Chang’s full text, go here.
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