The critics have been unkind to Girl Most Likely, a film in which Imogene (Kristen Wiig), a Manhattan playwright, has been rejected by her boyfriend, a job, and some friends, and loses her apartment. To get the ex’s attention and/or sympathy, she stages a fake suicide attempt, which backfires. She winds up in the hospital, and the discharge plan involves living with her estranged mother Zelda (Annette Bening), a gambling addict.
Or, Another Movie Description…
Sara Stewart, New York Post: “This lazy comedy plays like a round of Quirky Indie Mad Libs: Kristen Wiig is a struggling New York (blank) who freaks out when (blank) and ends up back in Nowheresville, (blank), with her trashy mom who (blank) and her weird brother who (blank).”
Surely the Cast Makes This Worth Seeing?
Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: “‘Girl Most Likely’ is the kind of movie destined to become the answer to the rhetorical question, ‘With a cast this good, how bad can it be?’ You might think that any film featuring Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening, Matt Dillon and Darren Criss (not to mention supporting turns by Bob Balaban, Natasha Lyonne and June Diane Raphael) would have some redeeming qualities, but you would be incorrect.”
Are There Any Interesting Characterizations That Defy One Unified Mental Health Assessment? (That Would Be Ralph, Imogene’s Brother)
Sara Stewart, New York Post: “Broadway regular Christopher Fitzgerald brings the Zack Galifianakis-y edge as Imogene’s brother, Ralph, a mess of vaguely sketched agoraphobic dysfunction.”
Rex Reed, New York Observer: “Mentally challenged kid brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald) wears oversized T-shirts that say ‘Crab Villa’ (emphasizing his obsession with all things crustacean) and crawls around on the floor inside a fiberglass mollusk shell.”
Other descriptions from top reviewers include “socially awkward,” “unusual,” “stunted,” “simple,” “intellectually disabled,” “special-needs,” and “unique.”
The Trailer:
In conclusion, Claudia Puig, USA Today, hits on some of the misfires: “a failure from start to finish.”
Efforts at humor fall more than flat — they’re tone deaf. The film features a cast of unpleasant wacky caricatures rather than remotely credible humans, led by Kristen Wiig in a variation of her luckless character in Bridesmaids, without a smidgen of that role’s relatability. But where Wiig made indignities comical in that 2011 film, here they mostly feel beneath her.
The story is dull, hollow and almost painful to sit through.