Welcome to Me (2015)

Welcome to Me (2015)

Welcome to Me Review

Directed by Shira Piven and starring always wonderful Kristen Wiig, Welcome to Me is a 2015 black comedy drama movie which is one of the weirdest and funniest movies recently for sure.

This is one of the weirdest stories, but I’ll try to summarize it. The protagonist is Alice Klieg, a woman who lives off benefits from her borderline personality disorder and after finally winning a lottery, she spends most of the money to start her own TV  show which centers around her and is called as in the movie’s title. This is an incredibly weird and odd movie, but because weird can go either good or bad, thankfully this is a positively weird movie. It, like ‘50/50‘ before it, tries to make a dramedy, for the most time a straight comedy, out of a difficult subject matter of illness. And for the most part, it does succeed, although some of the later parts can be a bit uneven tonally because of a sudden shift from comedy to straight drama. But before that, the first two acts are great and very funny. The script is incredible and highly original, not to mention very amusing. It is a high-concept idea which is also executed superbly for the most part.

I found the humor here phenomenal across the board. There are many laugh out loud sequences, especially in the middle of the movie and it is all thanks to the wonderfully developed protagonist and excellent Kristen Wiig. Yes, the characterization is terrific for the lead, successfully creating a funny, but realistic character. However, other characters fail to bring much to the table and they all pale compared to Alice. The same can be said for the acting, all the other actors did a perfectly fine job, but this is Kristen’s show and she pulled it off wonderfully. She gave a highly respectable performance in a role that is very difficult, once again proving how phenomenal an actress she is and how great most of her projects are.

The movie is also very well directed and executed. And of course extremely well written. And it is well filmed with excellent imagery and thrilling production design of a TV show, perfectly suiting the protagonist’s image. Yes, the tone is not that well handled, but the pacing is surprisingly good and this running time is perfect for this kind of film. The dialogue is thanks to the script superb. And along with fantastic humor, the movie also manages to have a lot of heart which is evident in the beautiful ending. It perfectly ended the whole movie with the resolution and making up with her best friend. That relationship was very grounded, and beautiful to behold as well as being one of the highlights of the film most definitely. It also wrapped up perfectly with the end scene with her finally being able to sleep with TV shut off. Although it somewhat jarringly shifted into the pure drama territory, that final act is nonetheless a great conclusion to this very weird, but beautiful movie.

With a beautifully developed protagonist, a terrific performance from always amazing Kristen Wiig, wonderfully and positively weird script and an absolutely fantastic humor with many laugh out loud sequences, Welcome to Me does have a jarring shift in tone near the end and the supporting characters pale in comparison to the main one, but this is mostly a very original and very funny movie with also a lot of realism and heart at its core with very emotional and perfectly concluded ending. It is one of the weirdest and funniest movies in recent memory.