She's Funny That Way

Veteran writer/director Peter Bogdanovich looks to the screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s for inspiration in the tale of rising starlet Izzy (Imogen Poots) and neurotic director Albert (Owen Wilson) who makes the mistake of bedding her. In fact the story is scattered much wider and spread a lot thinner than that, to include Kathryn Hahn as Albert's wife, who is acting alongside Izzy in Albert's latest Broadway show, a typically louche Rhys Ifans as the co-star who is in love with Hahn and Jennifer Aniston, who could be in another movie entirely, playing the crotchety therapist whose husband (Will Forte) penned the play and has a crush on Izzy. Aniston is also treating Izzy, in one of many plot contrivances that are supposed to give the film an air of period farce, but which, in the context of modern-day New York, fall flat. The dialogue is often witty but when the characters are drawn in such rough strokes (Poots is especially broad with her Brookyln accent), it is impossible to invest in the overcomplicated dilemmas they're faced with. Viewers are more likely to find this funny in the sense of strange.