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Vapidly Ever After

While there is plenty to love about Kristen Wiig, there is little to love about "Girl Most Likely." Really, it's an atrocious mess - a sitcom that wouldn't make it through the first season. Everything is so strained and awkward and clumsy that the only thing to root for is its eventual end.

Wiig is back in "Bridesmaids" mode here (a hilarious movie, unlike this one), flailing around in her adult life and saying hello to a meltdown. After her boyfriend drops her and she loses her New York editorial job the same week, she decides to fake suicide as a ploy to gain his pity. She winds up in a hospital and is released into the care of her over-the-top, histrionic mother (played by Annette Bening), who lives on the Jersey shore. Nothing screams "I've made it!" like moving back home in your 30s and wandering from room to room in a frumpy old "Friends" T-shirt.

It is hard to laugh at someone who fails at life, has unsteady employment (she fancies herself a playwright) and a sick enough mental state to feign her own death over a guy. But it's also hard to care about someone who is so deeply clueless and living in a very fake version of the real world. The conflicting tone is the main problem with Imogene - yes, that's her name, and her mom's name is Zelda, because the quirk volume has to be deafening - and the movie itself. The script by Michelle Morgan isn't funny or emotional enough to make for a pleasant night out.

Wiig has a few moments where she is allowed to shine, but so few. One that comes to mind is when she tries to steal a book from a library, indiscreetly sticking it up her shirt as a librarian watches. More of those kinds of scenes would be great, but instead we're left with her grown-up, special-needs brother (Christopher Fitzgerald) building a giant shell so he can walk around in it outside and be protected from the world. Or Zelda's bizarre CIA-related boyfriend George Bousche (Matt Dillon) spanking her in the kitchen. Or Lee (Darren Criss, as a younger love interest) wearing eyeliner and singing Backstreet Boys songs. You get the picture.

Directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini showed real promise when they came out with "American Splendor" back in 2003, but since then they have released "The Nanny Diaries" and this drivel. They try to redeem the movie at the very end by scrambling to deliver a super-happy ending, but it just reads false like the rest of it. For a quality indie flick with humor and depth, check out "The Way, Way Back" and zip past the theater showing "Girl Most Likely" with your head held high.