Welcome to Me

Honestly, I usually have theories but this time I have no idea why this show received any rating under 80%. Some theorized people had specific expectations with a Will Farrell production. Some theorized 'it wasn't Bridesmaid enough'. Some theorized 'people will prejudge any show with a female lead as chick flick and trash it'. Maybe they're all correct. Perhaps because I went in with openness and moderate expectation, I see this deadpan, no-laugh-track comedy classic as Farrell candid ROTF funny, better deeper funnier than Bridesmaid - and 300% not a chick flick. I watched Bridesmaid but still Kristen didn't immediately register. I gave it a go based on a few well-written IMDb reviews alone. As the show starts I was delighted to learn that heavy weights like Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack are on board. Later I was pleasantly surprised by familiar faces like Linda Cardellini, James Marsden, Wes Bentley. All contributed wonderfully to this well-conceived well- executed story about 'what a psychologically-unstable woman do with her lottery winning'. The premise is rich, the result is delicious. Kristen Wigg's actor chop, range, and fearlessness, is superb, admirable and definitely entertaining. Various related subject matters are explored: post-Facebook post-YouTube me-me-me vanity culture, reality show production standards and ethics, borderline behavior, value of true friendship, things most people could related to... The lead character has no filter, is an "emotional exhibitionist", has OCD protein *, brittle, yet manipulative, mean, vengeful, sexually aggressive, deeply self-pitying yet oblivious to human suffering right next to her, hence a natural at shock value generation. The reaction in the TV production control room is just priceless. YouTube goers would find a particular cake eating scene sarcastic funny. Still the narrative tone is never cruel or judgmental, an amazing feat in itself. Other characters' distinct reactions to her 'charisma' and big plan to exhibit herself is also both hilarious and insightful. Side note: The show didn't go out to explain borderline behavior but oddly afterward I'm slightly more enlightened about the triggers of occasional borderline outbursts of people I had interacted with. It also shows that borderline condition describes more a gradient spectrum rather than entire persons (and therefore more prevalent than commonly thought) Visually and aurally the show is captivating and fun. The pink plastic princess reality TV circus, her self-penned theme song, her romantic overtures, Tim Robbin the tennis tan therapist, Jason Leigh the crazy hair grouchy producer with strong ethics, Cusack the versatile voice actor, backstage dogs and swans, OCD recipes and cheesy re-enactments, are all bonuses... Rarely a comedy makes one laugh so much, yet feel a little more at the same time. I've added the director Shira Piven to my Director to Watch "movie quality filter" list. Welcome To Me is a comedy gem among under-rated comedy gems. 9/10. Plus 1 star for balancing. Highly recommended.

This is the story of Alice Kleig (Kristen Wiig). She wakes up every day at 12: 15, her TV has been on for ten years, she knows by heart a great number of Oprah Winfrey shows. Alice was diagnosed bipolar at 16. Well as she explains it, in those days it was called manic-depressive, then bipolar and now borderline personality disorder. Alice win 86 millions of dollars at the lottery. So she pays for her own TV show, where she'll be the host and will talk about herself. This film could be considered as a critic of our selfie and real TV era where anyone plays his/her life as a show. It could be seen as a critic of how people consummate themselves in their image, and lose their soul with this profusion of extimity, like American Indian who thought that pictures stole their soul. But instead of being a parody, and a critic Welcome to Me stays focused on Alice. And Welcome to Me becomes an idea of what would be the equivalent of Outsider art for television. Alice is helped in creating what she wants by her greedy producer, and her knowledge of television, so the show looks like a performance, and this kind of humour reminds of Andy Kaufman's. It is brilliant. The soundtrack use is very interesting. I was very interested in the way a weird song like Happy Talk by Daniel Johnston is used as a standard. Is he credited? Or is it some kind of standard I didn't know of? The fact that the author uses his music, or the music he used shows that she's interested of the creativity of madness. (In fact Daniel Johnston created a show called Welcome to my World, so he probably inspired Shira Piven or Eliot Laurence the writer (impossible to say). What Alice exposes here, are her defense mechanisms against falling apart, all of the creation of her soul to hold on to herself: her things ordered by colours (once I was very bored and colour coordinated my books), her highly proteinated diet, her traumas… and she's capable of putting all that in a form that makes it watchable (a student in communication compares her work to Cindy Sherman's). Like the filmmaker who turned Daniel Johnston's music into a jazz standard, Alice's world is standardized for television, and makes madness watchable. (This is so rare in cinema, that it makes this film very important). Madness is sort of censured by general medias; it scares people, so it's very rare to have it portrayed in an interesting and creative way. It's most of the time reduced (especially since the DSMs became psychiatric bibles, cutting the classical mental categories into symptoms and little pieces) to neurological troubles, and simplify the human being as if we were only a mass of facts. But Alice because of the considerable sum she won can beat the censorship, explain herself, and tell her life like no one ever heard it. The film doesn't try to explain her madness or to cure it, but it shows her humanity and her fight to be defined by something else than a diagnostic that changes with medical fashions

Like a car accident in the next lane, I watched 30 minutes of this, wondering if it was ever going to get any less uncomfortable. Eventually, I drove past the accident, then I couldn't even see it in my mirror, and I found something else to watch.

its a story about boring-mentally ill girl who wins the lottery and she doesn't know what to do with her money. she's moving to casino hotel and making her own talk show about herself and her boring life before she won. the story himself is awful. The film moving slowly and when it moves, nothing is advanced the plot. Here and there having sex with some persons, cry, seeing the psychiatrist, goes, comes back, nothing happens there! wouldn't recommend for this movie to my worst enemies. and i didn't even started to speak about this poor acting of kristen wiig and the other actors. and her voice when she's singing - awkward!! don't waste you time on this. you will regret. honestly.