THE PREMISE:

"A woman wins an all-expenses trip to a company's gorgeous "institute" outside of Florence, and also the chance to meet the restaurant chain's wealthy and charismatic owner. She finds a different adventure than the one she imagined."

OUR MOVIE REVIEW:

They had me with Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza and then immediately disappointed me with Plaza being in only fifteen minutes of the film before disappearing entirely. Spin Me Round is a “comedy” with a real reliance on its weird, dry sense of humor. Director/Screenwriter Jeff Baena (with writing partnership with Brie) has created yet another bizarre comedy that just completely fell off the rails in such a remarkably tragic way. Baena has a distinct tell for everything he’s apart of: running a fascinating premise into the ground by quickly being empty of cohesive ideas and replacing them with absolute nonsense. To be fair to the filmmaker I’ve only seen Life After Beth (2014) and The Little Hours (2017) the one time each, even going out of my way to hunt the latter at my local indie cinema only to come out just as tired and exhausted as I did from this SXSW premiere. 

Produced by the Duplass brothers, their name being involved usually sparks some genuine interest and for the most part garners favorable reception for their unique choices in what they decide to produce. Their style embraces the act of improvisation and in this film – if everything was improvised then at least there’s some kind of excuse for this absolute misfire with such a fabulous cast. With the likes of the previously mentioned Alison Brie taking the reigns along with a supporting cast constructed of Aubrey Plaza, Tricia Helfer, Debby Ryan, Lil Rel Howery, Fred Armisen, Alessandro Nicola, Ayden Mayeri, Zach Woods, Tim Heidecker, Ben Sinclair…and Molly Shannon. God, I hope that list was just as exhausting for you to read as it was for me to write – that’s the issue. There’s too much improvisational talent here and with such a bizarre outline to play off of. Everyone in the cast either delivers subdued performances or over indulges to an extreme that makes the overall experience of the film incredibly disjointed as you can’t figure out if the cast are playing deeply into the odd sense of humor the film has or just simply is doing their own thing to no avail.