Welcome to Me (2014)

Directed by Shira Piven
Written by Eliot Laurence
Starring Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Linda Cardellini, Wes Bentley and Joan Cusack

When Alice Klieg, a woman living with borderline personality disorder, wins the Mega-Millions lottery, she immediately quits her psychiatric medications and buys her own talk show.

I could rant for a good while about how many problems I had with this film. Everything from the technical aspects to how painful it was watching this movie. And not painful in a good way, or an awkward way. While the subject matter was meant to be awkward and induce the same kind of reaction you get while watching Michael Scott on the Office, it's was just poorly made. About as poorly made as the TV show the protagonist of the movie created.

The owners of the TV studio she has help her in creating her passion project have no idea how a TV studio is run. Failing to achieve even the most basic knowledge of film law, such as slander, defamation and animal cruelty, these studio heads leave no mystery as to why their studio is failing. Only it's not portrayed as some grand comedy of errors. It is presented as this big surprise that the audience shouldn't have seen coming.

In a film that seems like it wants to bring an awareness to mental illness, it definitely succeeds in doing that. Only not for the better. It does more harm than it does good in it's portrayal of a woman with borderline personality disorder. She is given no redeemable qualities, not to mention any human qualities. She's seems more like an alien from outer space and even when she is given the chance to redeem herself, she fails miserably with empty gestures and actions that just reflect everything she did wrong prior to her conflicts.

Pictured: The lack of a character arc.

I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of Kristin Wiig. In fact, the only thing I've liked her in was "The Skeleton Twins". But I had such high hopes for this movie. I went in wanting to love it. I gave it a fair shot. And it just completely disappointed me. It had nothing to say that had any value. This is the first movie I have seen in a long time that I have no idea how it got made.

My Rating: 1/10

The D Train (2015)

Written and Directed by Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel
Starring Jack Black, James Marsden, Kathryn Hahn and Jeffrey Tambor

The head of a high school reunion committee, Dan Landsman travels to Los Angeles to track down the most popular guy from his graduating class and convince him to go to the reunion. While there, the two develop an unexpected bond that Dan would just like to forget.

I'm sure many will find this movie homophobic, I don't feel that is the case. The foundation of the movie is a man who feels under appreciated and will do anything he can to be noticed and loved by his peers. That is a sentiment we can all relate to at some point in our lives.

Equally awkward and outrageous, this movie fails to land on many of it's jokes and gags. While their are a few giggles, they are separated by minutes upon minutes of shielding your eyes from the uncomfortable nature of the story. I am positive that that is what the filmmakers wanted to accomplish, but it made for an experience that caused me to check my phone constantly.

The scenes, references and jokes that are funny in this movie are really, genuinely funny. But they are too few and far between to make it consistently enjoyable. As a fan of Jack Black, it was good seeing him back on the big screen, regardless of what I was watching. And this is undoubtedly his most outrageous role to date. If that's any consolation.

My Rating: 5/10