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The first-time director in question is Sam , a playwright whose Southern-melodrama hokum is about to get a staged production in Los Angeles. But when the theater company’s usual director is outed as a sexual predator, boss Sheldon convinces Sam to take over. Good optics and all that. Already the movie is at a satirical disadvantage, because Sam is well aware of her own inexperience as a director, and how her writing doesn’t necessarily qualify her to shepherd its translation to the stage.
The ensemble-as-ensemble players of Kate Berlant, Megan Mullally, Blake Anderson, Benito Skinner, Megan Stalter, and Jak Knight have fun sketching out different forms of actorly vanity, but a lot of their behavior seems arbitrary, unbound by much sense of characterization beyond a couple of loose types: “the social media one” and “the chipper one reminiscent of hercharacter” .
And yet: There are some very funny moments here. A scene at the home of an elderly theater patron nails the inspired lunacy that seems aching to be released from other sequences, and builds to a laugh-out-loud punchline. The tone-deaf details of Sam’s play get funnier as more of its absurdities are revealed. A late-movie detour into a social club for “canceled” men nails the stubborn, ego-stoking pride that cancellation somehow affixes to bad behavior.
But the fuck-it tone of the movie’s satire, making it increasingly clear that Sam isn’t especially talented, feels a little disingenuous coming from a comedian who’s actually, you know, successful in her chosen field. That gap between subject and filmmaker could be bridged iffelt less like a spare-time improv exercise, and more like a movie with a demented mission, like the kid-lit deconstruction of.