Taglines: Insanity runs in the family.
Imogene (Kristen Wiig) is a failed New York playwright awkwardly navigating the transition from Next Big Thing to Last Year’s News. After both her career and relationship come to a halt, she’s forced to make the humiliating move back home to New Jersey with her eccentric mother and younger brother.
Adding further insult to injury, there’s a strange man (Darren Criss) sleeping in her old bedroom and an even stranger man sleeping in her mother’s 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 she’s ever going to be stable enough to get away from them.
Girl Most Likely is an American comedy film directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. Based on a screenplay by Michelle Morgan, the film stars Kristen Wiig as a playwright who stages a suicide in an attempt to win back her ex, only to wind up in the custody of her gambling-addict mother, played by Annette Bening. Matt Dillon, Christopher Fitzgerald, and Darren Criss co-star.
The film was screened under its original title Imogene at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2012. The same month, Lionsgate bought the US distribution rights following its Toronto premiere and released it with Roadside Attractions on July 19, 2013.
Upon its festival release, Girl Most Likely garnered generally negative reviews from critics. Christopher Schobert from film blog The Playlist called the film “a big-screen sitcom, elevated by Kristen Wiig and Annette Bening”. He wrote that Wiig’s “likability oozes from every scene in Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s occasionally winning, a touch too sitcom-y, but often very funny look at one woman’s offbeat family and her attempts at discovering just what went wrong on the road to success. It is not, to be sure, Bridesmaids-style humor, and never reaches that blockbuster’s belly laugh count. But the film doesn’t lack for moments of inspired comedy, and I expect it to find an audience.”
Deborah Young, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, also felt that “the film’s great strength is its intuitive casting. The actors interact so well that it’s hard to single out one performance, though it’s perhaps Bening who wins the day for the sexy humanity she gives to the former go-go dancer Zelda. Morgan’s screenplay is full of intelligent dialogue that got real laughs from the audience on its Toronto bow.”
In his review, Justin Chang from Variety felt that “an able cast, led by Kristen Wiig’s prickly lead turn, saves this uneven, excessively quirky but ultimately ingratiating story […] Offering another sly snapshot of the filmmakers’ native New York, a la The Nanny Diaries and The Extra Man this soft-bellied crowdpleaser should post modest numbers in specialty play and DVD / VOD rotation.
Girl Most Likely (2013)
Directed by: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon, Christopher Fitzgerald, Darren Criss
Screenplay by: Michelle Morgan
Production Design by: Annie Spitz
Cinematography by: Steve Yedlin
Film Editing by: Robert Pulcini
Costume Design by: Tom Broecker
Set Decoration by: Shannon Finnerty
Music by: Rob Simonsen
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content and language.
Studio: Lionsgate Films, Roadside Attractions
Release Date: July 19, 2013
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