One-Liners: C-List

Averaging things out ...

WELCOME TO ME (B) -  Our gal Kristen Wiig remains a wonder, this time as a woman with self-diagnosed borderline personality disorder who wins $86 million in the lottery and decides to fund her own self-centered talk show on a time-share station that has fallen on hard times. Like in "Skeleton Twins," she carries a movie farther than it deserves with her comedic range and soulful character study.

Wiig is Alice Klieg, who is either mentally ill or just really weird. (She has sessions with a contentious therapist, played by a New Age-y Tim Robbins.) In Wiig's hands, and as drafted by newcomer Eliot Laurence, the character is a wonder of human engineering. She is hypersexual. She is obsessed with swans (prompted by a trauma at the zoo). She runs her TV nonstop. She's self-treating her anxiety with a high-protein diet, shunning processed sugar, which she compares to child abuse. She doesn't believe in luck but rather in the power of intention. She mispronounces words, like "carbohydrants." She likes to read prepared statements. She organizes her apartment by color. When a man introduces himself by saying "Hi, I'm Rich," she deadpans, "So am I." The TV coverage of her Lotto press conference is cut short when she starts explaining her masturbation therapy.

She has elderly parents. Her mom calls her an "emotional exhibitionist." And that's just what her two-hour TV show is. "Welcome to Me" features a woman with no filter, being indulged by hack producers who are just in it to cash her ridiculously large paychecks. (She pays $15 million upfront for 100 shows, a godsend for the struggling production company.) On one of her first shows she bakes a meatloaf "cake" with mashed-sweet-potato icing, and then sits silently for five minutes eating a piece. She recruits actors (wearing clunky name tags) to play her in slanderous re-enactments of painful episodes from her life (like the time someone pilfered her makeup or when a high school pal betrayed her confidence). It's as if Pee-Wee Herman were a real person with a clinical diagnosis holding forth at the Playhouse. There's barely enough audience to fill the studio's dozen or two seats, but she seems to be developing a cult following on TV and online.

Wiig is countered generationally with Joan Cusack as the show's perpetually galled director. Cusack is as strong here as she was in "School of Rock." The pair elbow each other for Carol Burnett's crown, and the interplay anchors the movie.

Others don't fare as well. James Marsden is off-key as the greedy brother who happily cash Alice's checks. Wes Bentley ("American Beauty") is flat as the sympathetic brother. Jennifer Jason Leigh might as well sport a nametag that says "Conscience" as the sourpuss who can't believe the company is indulging Alice. Linda Cardellini (the "Mad Men" neighbor lady) can't find a consistent tone as Gina, Alice's childhood pal who grows increasingly frustrated by Alice's narcissism.

The narrative falls apart by the second half. Much about Alice's show is quite implausible, and the fallout that leads to the film's climax is laughably simplistic. In the end it makes you think that this isn't a very good movie. But Wiig -- with all that trouble bubbling under the surface of her fascinating face -- argues otherwise. 

AT ANY PRICE (D+) - Did we ever take Dennis Quaid seriously? I can't recall. The '80s are foggy. I remember liking him and Ellen Barkin a lot in "The Big Easy," but that was nearly 30 years ago, and apparently I haven't seen Mr. Quaid since. In this film -- about a cutthroat seed farmer in the heartland, Henry Whipple, who's hunky son Dean (Zac Efron) harbors race-car dreams -- Quaid is the biggest joke in a joke of a movie. He's a cartoon version of the noble farmer.

In fact, this film seems like it was made in the early 1980s and set in the early 1960s, starring Dean Jones and Kurt Russell, with music by John Cougar Mellencamp. Instead, it's a modern tale from the usually reliable Ramin Bahrani, who once had a memorable run with "Man Push Cart," "Chop Shop" and "Goodbye Solo." But that was nearly a decade ago.

The cliches run rampant. Dean competes with a favored brother who is never seen but only heard from via his letters written from his South American adventures. Poor Kim Dickens plays the quietly suffering wife, Irene, who puts up with Henry banging his secretary, Meredith (poor, poor Heather Graham). There's the gruff patriarch (Red West), constantly badgering middle-age Henry to not piss away what his father built. (In case the father-son dynamics aren't dire enough already.) Turns out, some meanies, tipped off by an informant, are looking into whether Henry is converting patented seeds to his own use.

The dialogue is ridiculous. The performances are erratic, but mostly overblown. The dark ending is too little too late.

BONUS TRACK
During "Welcome to Me," director Shira Piven skillfully uses music. When Alice goes down on a guy, we're treated to Donna Fargo's classic "Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A." Here are two moody tunes from the soundtrack.

Lili Rose McKay covers the Mountain Goats' "Love, Love, Love":



 Kitschy psychedelia from Margo Guryan: