COMEDY; 1hr 33min
STARRING: Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Rhys Ifans, Kathryn Hahn, Will Forte
Room service: Poots and Wilson
Tipping his top hat to the comedic soufflés of 1930s and ’40s Hollywood, What’s Up, Doc? director Peter Bogdanovich’s daffy production of his and his ex-wife Louise Stratten’s screenplay is a blast from a more innocent past. And so it is that a Brooklyn hooker (Poots as Isabella “Izzy” Patterson), with stars in her eyes and a ton of acting talent, finds herself auditioning for a Broadway play directed by extremely recent client, Arnold Albertson (Wilson), and co-starring Arnold’s wife, Delta (Hahn, devouring the high drama). In the meantime, Ifans is chilling out as the play’s leading man, Seth Gilbert, Forte is its mild-mannered writer, Joshua Fleet, and Aniston is a dead-set hoot as Joshua’s disgruntled girlfriend and quite possibly the world’s worst therapist. Ever.
Once the dominoes start toppling, there’s no stopping their wholesale collapse, which, to its credit, is consistently cuckoo even in what would realistically be its bleakest moments — that is, if reality had any bearing whatsoever on the screwy machinations. They culminate, as screwy machinations must, in a Happily Ever After that was never in doubt for a nanosecond. Good times!
