By Nicholas Ware
Girl Most Likely is a puzzle. A film with comedy treasure Kristen Wiig, solid and respected hands Annette Bening and Matt Dillion, and up-and-comer Darren Criss (from Glee) from the directors of American Splendor has every reason to be fantastic. Instead, Girl Most Likely ends up an unlikable, quirk-mired mess whose few bright spots do not make up for the infinite number of bad decisions in its writing. The plot combines the worst elements of every Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie (but gender reversed) and you-can't-go-home-again comedy with sickly sentiment that doesn't ring true and characters that are cartoonish at best and completely wrong-headed at worst. The film squanders copious good will that educated audiences will immediately have for the creative team involved and features an exceptionally short-sighted, anti-intellectual (yet pro-art) ending that I can't determine whether or not is meant to be a triumph for its main character or a final example of how profoundly unworthy she is. If you think I did not like Girl Most Likely, you are most likely correct.
The basic gist of Girl Most Likely's bonkers plot is that Imogene's boyfriend--a complete cipher--breaks up with her and she loses her job, leading to a fake suicide attempt (a ploy to get the boyfriend back) that leads to a real suicide attempt. Now it's fine to have unlikable characters that are redeemed by the end of a film, but Imogene's staging of a fake suicide is nearly unforgivable. How could an audience ever sympathize with her after something like that? Especially when it's played for laughs? Girl Most Likely makes it tough for the audience at every turn. After the suicide attempt, due to movie-world-only hospital logic, Imogene ends up with her estranged mother in Ocean City, New Jersey, nothing like her beloved New York City. The rest of the film involves her repeated attempts to reclaim her old life and eventually to reconnect with the father she hasn't seen since she was nine and her family in New Jersey (the afore-mentioned Annette Bening mother and an Asperberger's-having brother who is the best character in the film). Naturally, she learns life lessons. Good for her. Bad for us, because the process is bland and ridiculous.
Girl Most Likely is likely not as bad as I'm making it out to be. It is a bigger disappointment than it is a "bad" film. It's a parade of squandered potential and bad decisions, very few by the actors involved or the directors; mostly in the script. By the time the film climaxes in the most absurd way you could possibly imagine, as an audience member you're just exhausted: exhausted from caring about characters who don't act like real people, exhausted from trying to make sense of nonsense, and exhausted from giving a film chance after chance to be good when it steadfastly refuses. If you see Girl Most Likely, I'm sad to say, you'll most likely be disappointed.
Girl Most Likely opens today at Regal Winter Park and AMC Downtown Disney. Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language. Run time 1 hour 43 minutes.
