BEFORE: Yeah, I don't know about this one. I put it on my list because it was on Netflix for a while, but it scrolled off at some point, can't watch it there, that's not a good sign. It looks really weird, which is another not-so-good sign. But at least it's serving a purpose, it's connecting the first week of romance movies with the bigger part of that section, I had to kind of Frankenstein several smaller chains together this time around to get the big chain, so naturally there will be some films that serve as mortar to connect the bigger bricks, and if I can clear a film off the list that I just didn't know what to do with it or when to screen it, that's even better.
Michael St. Michaels carries over from "Alex & Emma". I'm not even 100% sure he's in this movie, because Wikipedia listed him in the film's credits, and so did several other web-based sources, but the IMDB didn't, not at first, anyway. So I'm taking a chance tonight, I hope he's in here.
THE PLOT: Lulu Danger's unsatisfying marriage takes a turn for the worst when a mysterious man from her past comes to town to perform a musical event "For One Magical Night Only".
AFTER: Man, this is a weird film, I watched and I still don't really know what to make of it, or what it's really about in the end, if I'm being honest. It kind of comes from that "Napoleon Dynamite" school of filmmaking, where somebody just wanted to hire a bunch of character actors, give them all funny names, and just let them run wild and be weird, hoping that the comedy would follow. Umm, it really didn't here, unless I missed it or I wasn't in the right mood to receive it.
But at the core of the story there's a woman who's unhappy with her life and her marriage - her husband was also her boss at the diner and he had to fire her to cut costs. But to be fair, if he had fired one of his other useless employees and kept Lulu on staff, he could be accused of favoritism, or she could be accused of sleeping with her boss to keep her job. So I can see it, but here all that is just one little thread in a weird tapestry of a story populated by weird characters, most of whom don't seem to understand this whole "acting" thing very well. I like Jemaine Clement fine, but he's another one of those people more known for taking weird roles and being all weird with it instead of being super-serious about delivering his lines believably.
Craig Robinson's usually good, too, except here his title character is non-verbal for most of the movie, so there's a lot of communicating through grunts and growls, and that kind of leaves me scratching my head, also. What is the point of all that? Beverly Luff Lynn is some kind of musical superstar, scheduled to perform for one night only at the Moorhouse Hotel's lounge, but he's also got a bad case of gas or constipation or bloating or something, and midnight swims in the hotel pool don't seem to be helping, nor does the care of his platonic male life companion, who also serves as his road manager and caregiver.
But first there's Lulu, who made the mistake of mentioning to her no-good husband, Shane Danger, that her brother keeps his life savings in a lockbox in his spice store, leading Shane to plan a robbery with the help of the other two non-fired employees of the diner, but for some reason they think if they just put on brightly colored wigs, then Adjay won't recognize Shane, his own brother-in-law. Huh? Don't most robbers think to, you know, wear a mask or cover their face somehow? So really, there's no shock over who robbed Adjay, who then hires mystery man Colin, while at the laundromat, to get his money back. While Colin is trying to rob the robbers, Lulu gets the bright idea to grab his gun and basically take the gunman hostage, but together they get away with the money and more importantly, Lulu gets away from her husband.
Lulu and Colin get a room with twin beds at the weird Moorhouse hotel, which has a weird front desk man, a weird bartender and a weird DJ, but the hotel's manager is the weirdest of all. Lulu really wants to see that musical performance by Beverly Luff Linn, and eventually we find out that Beverly (which is a man's name, according to half the characters here) was her college professor and her first love, but he disappeared during a long swim while they were on vacation, and Lulu had assumed for years that he was dead.
Instead Beverly Luff Linn became a mysterious musical sensation, and is out on tour playing the finest hotel lounges in California, only the show keeps getting delayed by 24 hours due to his gastro-intestinal problems. After three days of this, the crowd at the Moorhouse can't wait to see him perform, and neither can we. But I'm sorry to say that the build-up for the big fantastic show is a lot stronger than the show itself, which is basically just a few Scottish folk songs sung by Beverly and his platonic male life companion and road manager. Then the whole thing gets interrupted by a fist-fight when Lulu's husband shows up with a birthday cake for her and tries to win her back, and it does not go well.
Well, I guess Lulu had to settle things with her long-lost love Beverly before she could move on, dump her terrible husband, and look forward to her new life with the mysterious hit-man (?) Colin. That's how things go, if I understood this one correctly, but still, I'm just not sure that I did, because it's that obtuse about everything that took place. Perhaps it's best to just have another cocktail at the bar and try not to overthink it. I can see this maybe catching on with a certain crowd of cinemaphiles as a cult hit, maybe, but as a straight film, there's really not much here to work with, just weird people being weird.
Also starring Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Ingrid Goes West"), Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Darkest Hour"), Jemaine Clement (last seen in "Avatar: The Way of Water"), Matt Berry (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Craig Robinson (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Maria Bamford (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Zach Cherry (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Jacob Wysocki (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Michael D. Cohen (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Sky Elobar (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), John Kerry (last seen in "Babylon"), Bettina Devin (last seen in "Rent"), Mellanie Hubert (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Sam Dissanayake (last seen in "This is 40"), Carl Solomon, Kirsten Krieg, Russ Burd (last seen in "Being the Ricarods"), Gil Gex, Luis Molina, Bruce Paz.
RATING: 3 out of 10 microwaved tamales from the gas station
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