For some reason, quite a few recent releases have chosen to feature unlikable characters in main rolls. I don’t mean unlikable in the sense that they do bad or morally questionable things, I mean unlikable as in screeching hell-beasts cast in the form of people with nothing remotely likeable, or anything about them, to make me give a damn whether they live or die. Girl Most Likely boasts three such rolls.

Girl Most Likely (directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini) opens with Imogen (Kristin Wiig) faking a suicide attempt in an attempt to win back her boyfriend. She is not depressed or suicidal, she just wants a boyfriend and figures a suicide attempt (in skimpy negligee) is a good way to get his attention. In doing so, she ends up in the psych ward at a New York hospital, keeping patients who actually needs the bed out. The character development she undergoes from this point forward is minimal at best. The only moments where she behaves like an adult are with her brother Ralph (Christopher Fitzgerald), who has an unidentified developmental disability. When someone (finally) lays down the law, she storms off in a huff and sulks. The only way her character appears to grow is in direct comparison with someone even worse. She remains an unlikable, spoiled child until the trite ending where everything is resolved off-screen.

The film also features an absolutely preposterous final ten minutes, involving government operatives and Romanian hit men.

Terrible.

Donal O’Connor