Imogene Duncan is one of the everyday women, who are filled with possibilities, but has not lived up to her potential. In fact she's failed miserably and fakes her suicide to get her Dutch ex-boyfriend to come rescue her. Directors of American Splendor, The Nanny Diaries, and Cinema Verite Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini collaborate again on Michelle Morgan's screenplay in a funny but uneven film with the promise of Kristen Wiig and Annette Bening that doesn't quite live up to it's expectations.
Wiig is great as Imogene who in a brief span of time loses her boyfriend and her job writing blurbs on Broadway plays for a New York magazine. At one time she had won a $30,000 prize to write a play and the chance to have it produced. Instead she spent the money with her new found uptown friends. She is put on hold at the hospital due to her supposed attempt on her life. She even left a note which everyone complements was well written. But they need the beds and she's turned over to the care of her estranged mother who she hasn't seen in years. Mom, Zelda (Annette Bening) is addicted to gambling living with her boyfriend George the Bousche (Matt Dillon). He says he's in the CIA and can't reveal his real name. Imogene's room at their New Jersey Ocean Side home is now occupied by Lee (Darren Criss) a Yale graduate who works in a boy band cover group at the casino. Her younger brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald) has a kiosk on the boardwalk selling hermit crabs. He's even invented a human crab shell. It's bad enough that Imogene must endure the eccentric family, but she's been also locked out of her New York apartment and she's forced to wear her high school wardrobe she left behind. And if that wasn't enough, she discovers that her beloved father didn't die and is actually alive and a successful author and authority on colonial America!
Wiig inhabits Imogene as a passive aggressive trying to fight her way back to her old life in the big city. Most of her characters have these same traits and it's become something to expect from her. Bening basically steals the show as the floozy mom in her leggings and flashing tops. Dillon is a hoot as “The Bousche” who spins these yarns that has everyone captivated except for Imogene. Darren Criss gets to do his Glee thing and sing a 90's Backstreet Boys imitation. Later he takes off his shirt for those that care. There is so much happening, but there's some real heart going on between Imogene and her brother who has been waiting patiently for his sister to come back home.
It's hard to imagine that a woman like Imogene would be so thrown off when her boyfriend leaves her that it would cause her to lose her job and self respect. Whatever happened to breaking up then having drinks with friends and dissing the S.O.B, before promising to become successful and making him sorry for ever leaving them in the first place. The connect with Imogene's plight is somewhat difficult, but her family is the right kind of weird, and more fun to hang out with.
(Review by reesa)
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