It’s tough to make a smart movie about mental illness, and tougher still when you’re gleefully cramming it full of oh-so-meta commentaries on social media, overshares, emotional lollygagging, and the fleeting hollowness of modern instafame.
And that’s the main problem with Kristen Wiig‘s Welcome to Me, an uneasy dark comedy set in Palm Desert. The film follows Alice Klieg — a lonely TV addict with borderline personality disorder who’s recently stopped her medication — as she wins $86 million, dismisses her state-sponsored therapist (thanks for the breezy sartorial rimshots, suddenly-silver-foxy Tim Robbins!), and promptly pays a fly by night studio to produce her own “talk show.” With Wes Bentley around, the movie’s creepy/weird bona fides are secure — and James Marsden (laser eyes!), Linda Cardellini (Redwood City holla!), the always excellent Joan Cusack (“Sergeant … Pepper“), Alan Tudyk (“it’s called a lance. Hellooo” — yeah, I went there) and others fill out a surprisingly deep casting bench (couch?).
Wiig does a great job playing the vacant-eyed, frozen-smiled Alice as she vilifies folks from her past, makes snap decisions, and generally runs down the bullets in the DSM V. But Alice comes off like a softer copy of Ellen Burstyn’s Sara Goldfarb in Requiem for a Dream, a film that did madness better and was a hoot to watch, too.
Alice doesn’t really develop at all, so there’s not much of a story here. Welcome to Me is an hour-thirty of the inmate running the asylum. It’s sometimes cute but more often depressing and kind of dirty-feeling, like a home visit from a smarmy salesman — a look at a world we’d rather not see. Any levity and feel-good moments — and there are many — end up smothered by the omnipresent truth that this is a diagnosed mental illness at work so, you know, probably better not to fan the flames. There’s social commentary here, of course, but it’s pretty obvious — hey, we’re all crazy social exhibitionists! — and you can get that for free (and a whole lot trippier) from Ryan Trecartin. Not that I suggest that. Or this movie, in fact.
Haus Verdict: Arty, hip-seeming, with a strong cast and a great job by Wiig, but ultimately hollow and not particularly pleasant.