Spin Me Round
A great cast featuring Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza can't save this half-baked comedy about a woman who wins a trip to Italy and a chance at romance.
“Spin Me Round” hasn’t figured out what it’s doing. Is it a comedy? A romantic dramedy? Parable about how women undermine their own self-confidence? I’m still not sure.
Some movies are confusing; others are confused. This tragically unfunny film about a youngish woman who wins a fabulous trip to Italy hoping to find romance features a great cast but a bipolar storyline that’s up, down, all over the place. It feels half-baked.
Alison Brie, who I’ve adored in “GLOW” and the criminally unseen “Sleeping with Other People,” is an indie favorite who specializes in playing smart, anxious women who get themselves into bad situations, often involving unworthy men.
She also co-wrote the screenplay with director Jeff Baena, and also serves as producer.
Here she plays Amber, who lives in Bakersfield and manages the local Tuscan Grove, a low-end Italian restaurant chain where the Alfredo sauce is squeezed onto the plate from a plastic pouch — the sort of place that is absolutely not based on a real franchise that rhymes with “Tall If Harden.”
It ain’t big shakes, but she seems content with this life — except for, of course, the lack of love. Amber recently had a bad breakup and is still in the putting the pieces back together stage.
She’s thrilled when her boss (Lil Rel Howery) reveals she’s one of the winners of an annual retreat for the best managers at the Italian villa HQ of Tuscan Grove owner Nick Martucci (Alessandro Nivola), a handsome-in-an-unthreatening-way type who appears in all the chain’s commercials. Amber confides in her bestie (Ego Nwodim) that she’s hoping to find somebody special on the trip.
Things are a little sketchy at first. Craig (Ben Sinclair), the guy running the retreat, demands their passports and sets them up in a cheesy hotel next to the villa. Their class sessions are uninspiring cooking demonstrations and out-of-the-book team building exercises.
The other invitees are a motley array of types, including a pair of younger women like Amber (Debby Ryan and Ayden Mayeri); a tall, amiable dweeb (Zach Woods); a show-off who claims celebrity status because he appeared on a cooking show (Tim Heidecker); and a kooky older woman, Deb (Molly Shannon), who lost her bag on the plane trip and cannibalizes Amber’s wardrobe and is generally inappropriately familiar.
Things turn up when Nick himself does, along with his personal assistant, Kat (Aubrey Plaza, who by the way is married to and a frequent collaborator with director Baena).
He’s just as nice and dreamy as he seems on TV, and Amber is astounded when he invites her to spend the day with him on his yacht. Nick turns out to be very vulnerable and open, they share a little canoodling, and it seems Amber has found the amore she’d been pining for.
It soon all turns to shite, of course.
There’s sniping among the group, Craig phones in the sessions — at one point having them watch “Life Is Beautiful,” which he thinks is appropriate because it’s in Italian — Deb grows increasing unstable and starts dressing like Blanche DuBois, and Kat begins sneaking off other women for dates with Nick.
The movie briefly grows interesting when Kat and Amber escape from Nick’s party for other rich people — Fred Armisen is the cattiest among them — and go off on a rowdy jaunt of their own. Amber finally gets a chance to break from the expectations people have for her, especially her own tendency to self-denigrate, and comes alive for a minute.
Brie is a charming presence as always, exuding the good-natured aura of a modern woman who must be nudged to stand up for herself. I admit after a lot of similar roles I’d like to see her play a brassy, sharp-edged gal who isn’t apologizing for herself all the time.
“Spin Me Round” fails miserably at being funny, or even interesting. It feels more like a streaming TV show than a feature film, and not one that’s spent enough time in the oven cooking.