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Overview
Imogen Poots brings her usual charm, and an odd accent, to this film which gives us a rundown of how her character, Isabella, went from an escort to a possibly up and coming actress.
Review (with Spoilers) – Below
Characters & Story
On one crazy, yet lucky night, Isabella (Imogen Poots) finds herself landing an escort gig with a director named Arnold (Owen Wilson). Someone who gives her $30,000, as he has many women before, because he thinks she is a nice girl and he wants her to get out of the business she’s in. Unfortunately for him, though, what Isabella really wants to do with her life is become an actress. Leading to, the following day, Arnold and Isabella meeting again due to Isabella auditioning for a play Arnold is directing.
Thus leading to Isabella becoming the source of a lot of embarrassment and pain. For whether it is Arnold’s wife, Delta (Kathryn Hahn), who is to act opposite of Isabella, learning about the affair; Jane (Jennifer Aniston), learning her boyfriend has a crush on Isabella; or a judge cheating on his wife because he has found himself obsessed with her; it seems as sweet and innocent as Isabella may seem, she sure knows how to create, or simply find, chaos.
Praise
Alongside Emma Stone, Imogen Poots is another up and coming actress who possesses the type of charm which makes it so whether the movie is bad, good, or average, she comes out without much in the way of blame. For truly, amongst the film’s attempt to interconnect all these storylines and create the type of coincidences too convenient to be true, she perhaps is the only one who seems to keep your attention. Which isn’t to say the rest of the cast are horrible, for there are a few comedic moments Aniston brings when interacting with Will Forte, as Josh, and Austin Pendleton, as Judge Pendergast, but largely it is Poots’ charm which kept me going.
Criticism
That is, despite her rather odd accent and the film’s story honestly being a piece of work. For while, as noted, it has its comedic moments, it is hard to not think Pendleton over does it in his performance, and that, as a whole, Aniston may want to stick to dramatic roles since she is as hit and miss with comedies as Reese Witherspoon at this point. But what really made this movie seem like something hardly worth a marketing budget is the attempt to interconnect all the characters. For with it being that Isabella shares Jane as a psychologist with the Judge, then Jane is dating Josh, who meets Isabella due to her auditioning for a play Arnold is directing, who just slept with her which, unbeknownst to him, Seth (Rhys Ifans) knows about, which makes things bad for Arnold since he has a thing for Delta, it takes the idea of six degrees of separation a bit too far and just barely makes it work.
To go deeper, though, I think the main issue is the film has drama for the sake of creating comedic situations which don’t give any payoff. For while I’m not fond of the many coincidences, the true problem is that the awkward moments in which one character discovers they are being cheated on doesn’t lead to anything funny, nor turn the film into some sort of dramedy in which the characters seriously address the lack of trust and respect. Making it so while Poots, Wilson, Forte, and Ifans are generally unscathed, everyone else is so over the top that it is hard to see those few as any sort of silver lining.
Overall: Skip It
While it has its moments, sometimes you got to realize the reason you have likely never seen a trailer for a film, or heard of it, isn’t because of a low budget or anything like that. More so it is because the film isn’t worth the studio’s marketing budget and the actors don’t even want to pretend it is some of their best work. If anything, like many of the films in the Skip It label, be it because they simply wanted to work with the other actors, or work period, that is what got this film made and sadly while they deserve congratulations for it being released, unfortunately, it holds hardly anything worth merit. Hence the skip it label for while I could try to pretend Poots charm is strong enough to make this TV Viewing, I feel like I would be misleading you to say it compensates for the rest of the film.
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