Plaza shines in thoughtfully odd Ingrid Goes West

Elizabeth Olsen and Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West. Image courtesy Neon Rated.

What makes Ingrid Goes West fun in a strange way is how it makes audiences feel and think as the credit rolls. It’s entirely fair to have an icky feeling when leaving the theater, perturbed by the oddness of Aubrey Plaza's eponymous social media stalker, her easy ability to manipulate herself into the life of the seemingly perfect Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) troublesome in many ways. The movie is designed in part to cause the viewer to feel a little off from enjoying it, whether it is the awkward humor or the hints of sympathy directed toward Ingrid. This movie excels at being enjoyable awkward.

Ingrid Goes West is ostensibly a comedy about a stalker who inserts herself into a stranger's life out of a need for some love and affection. Along the way Ingrid disrupts the lives of Taylor's husband (Wyatt Russell), brother (Billy Magnussen) and a landlord who has a severe crush on her (a charmingly nerdy O'Shea Jackson Jr.). That this movie still classifies as a comedy and not a horror/thriller like Single White Female (a movie that gets a name drop in this one) is due to a solid script from writers David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer (Spicer also directs) and a killer lead performance by Plaza. Best known for as the dour April Ludgate, Plaza finds the right balance between subtly strange and completely off kilter, keeping what could be a caricature very human and pretty funny. She makes it funny and sad to watch Ingrid scroll through Instagram and like every post she sees, a meaningless gesture that is heartbreaking in the loneliness it projects.

Scenes like that make it easy to paint Ingrid Goes West as some sort of parable about the dangers of social media and how much the spread of otherwise useless personal information to a mass audience lessens the importance of personal connection. And it sort of is a warning of sorts, although it is less about how someone like Ingrid can sidle her way into someone's life and more about what social media allows people to do. Several post modern writers have made this point before, but the downside to social media is the emptiness it promotes. Taylor is defined largely by her social media presence, enough to replace any semblance of personality she had prior to becoming an Instagram star. Her intellectual strummings are gleaning by slight readings of important work, the image of being intelligent and thoughtful just as valuable as actually being so. Quoting Norman Mailer or Joan Didion means nothing if there's no understanding of why they said it and what that quote means on a personal level. So it makes sense for Taylor to feel repulsed by Ingrid as the film progresses. Ingrid is a facsimile of the Instagram starlet whose attempts at copying result in her becoming a slightly more real version of Taylor herself. Taylor pretends to read the texts she flaunts; Ingrid does so and finds meaning to it. That Ingrid is better at being Taylor than Taylor is a little horrifying on its own merits, as it exposes Taylor for being a shell of a free spirit. Even if Ingrid's obsessive nature hadn't been revealed, Smith and Spicer make it clear there is no way the relationship could last beyond a few fleeting moments.

Then again, a person can only achieve a certain level of fame if they haven't provided their audience at least a modicum of honesty to go with it. Despite being a failed attempt at simulacrum, Ingrid is at least honest about her emptiness and tries to find something to fill the void that is her life. She does show a few moments of honest sympathy, more than Taylor musters, and Ingrid Goes West concludes with the most honest moment of her life. The result is a sad and terrifying happy ending, a moment in which a character wins and it remains unclear what she'll do with her victory. What little growth Ingrid shows in the film isn't rooted in the firmest of soil, and the glow of joy on her face is disturbing and a testament to Plaza's performance; she sells the ambiguity of the moment perfectly.

All of this is a little heavy for a concept, but it goes to show there is a good amount of subtext worth diving into in Ingrid Goes West, a credit to Smith and Spicer for finding depth in a technology rooted in human emptiness. Smith and Spicer understand that the value of Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms resides within that emptiness itself, not just finding the best version of a person but revealing the ugliness underneath the facade. That the exploration of the shallowness is this entertaining and well made is a bonus.

Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 97 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Viewers who want to see Aubrey Plaza go off the rails.

Take the whole family?: This isn't the hardest R film, but still keep the kids at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Not a vital theater experience but worth the trip if it’s playing near you.

What kind of funny is this movie?: While this is a comedy, it isn't quite a guffaw inducing movie. The humor is tied less to antics and more to a mix of awkward humor and outright nihilistic jokes in which the punchline is the action didn't really matter anyway. This is definitely one of those movies in which a personal view of the comedy will define the appreciation of the movie.

Watch this as well?: This is pretty comparable to The Talented Mr. Ripley with more comedy and slightly less homoerotic subtext to work from.

Robert De Niro has sunk to a new low

Zac Efron and Robert De Niro exert energy in "Dirty Grandpa." Image courtesy Lionsgate.

I have no idea why Robert De Niro chose to participate in “Dirty Grandpa.” I doubt very much that he needs a cash influx – being Robert De Niro creates access to choice roles not offered to the Burt Reynolds of the world. There is a chance De Niro just likes these types of films – he did star in multiple “Meet the Parents” flicks over the years – although his palpable boredom and sincere lack of effort on screen makes that a no. Maybe he just wanted to exchange lazy innuendo with Aubrey Plaza, which, really, is difficult to fault a person for doing at all. Whatever the reason may be, the result is a dreadful film that has one of the greatest cinematic figures repeatedly jamming his thumb up Zac Efron's butt and dropping a lot of discomfiting racist and homophobic humor because why not.

Before all of that happens though, De Niro's Dick Kelly is mourning the loss of his beloved wife, who died after a very long battle with cancer. Supposedly grief stricken, De Niro recruits his grandson Jason (Efron), a young lawyer at his father's (Dermot Mulroney) firm, to drive with him from Atlanta to Boca Raton Florida to play a little golf and bond. It’s worth nothing that this plan, for whatever reason, takes place a week before Efron's wedding to stereotypical controlling fiance Meredith (Julianne Hough).

De Niro’s plan gets derailed once he and Efron encounter college students Plaza (about a decade too old for this role, but whatever), Bradley (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, also a decade too old for his part) and Efron's former classmate/token love interest Shadia (Zoey Deutch, actually the appropriate age for her part) heading to Daytona Beach for spring break weekend.  De Niro really, really wants to spend some quality time with Plaza, and coerces Efron to head to the beach for a weekend of debauchery. There they encounter irascible drug dealer Pam (Jason Mantzoukas), LAX bros Cody and Brah (Jake Picking and Michael Hudson, respectively) and some morally squiffy cops (Mo Collins and Henry Zebrowski), among others. Such racism, along with shenanigans involving penises, drawings of penises, sexual harassment, drugs, booze, flexing, punching and everything else that happens during an average weekend in Florida, ensue.

Something “Dirty Grandpa” deserves credit for is delivering exactly what the previews and title promise; De Niro saying and doing filthy, disgusting things. For anyone who wants to see Jimmy Conway do such things, this is probably the best opportunity he or she will ever have to witness such things, regardless of how effective Jake LaMotta is at actually performing it. The answer to that remains to be determined; as mentioned above, De Niro really isn't putting in that much effort into this one – even his emotional scenes underwhelm – so he gets a begrudging incomplete. It is, however, fair to provide an “F” to the person who decided to cast young Vito Corleone as the comedic driving force for this film.

I'd say De Niro doesn't quite fit this type of film, but I'm not sure the filmmakers (director Dan Mazer and writer John Phillips) are up to the task of serving a proper film. The plot, which is trite and obvious, makes zero sense and stretches the limits of credulity frequently. There are also a number of weird plot holes that need filling in, most notably how Efron and Deutch could have taken a class together when the former is an established attorney and the latter hasn't graduated college. Add to that some noticeable continuity errors and frequent syncing issues with the audio, and you have yourself a rather lovely mess of a film.

A comedy can overcome such issues, although a movie does actually have to be funny to do so. I shouldn't say “Dirty Grandpa” is a dire film that acts as a sinkhole for jokes – humor is subjective after all – but  I can say whatever laughs are to be found in this film are based on stereotypes, sexual anatomy, De Niro, or some combination of the three. In other words, it's not very inventive, although neither is the depiction of women as, to put it uncomfortably bluntly, sluts, saints and shrews. “Dirty Grandpa” aims for the reliable lowest common denominator and strikes gold at the expense of social progress, the state of comedy, and De Niro's dignity, or at least what's left of it.

Rating: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 102 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who wants to watch Robert De Niro curse wantonly.

Take the whole family?: An onslaught of junk shots makes this rather inappropriate for kids, so keep anyone below their mid teens at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Netflix and other streaming options only if you must.

What does work in 'Dirty Grandpa'?: A couple of jokes do land to bump it from miserable to just bad, and Jason Mantzoukas and Aubrey Plaza are both very game, even if the former's character belongs in a radically different film. Despite my reservations about this film, “Dirty Grandpa,” somehow, could've been a whole lot worse.

Watch this instead?: You're better served checking out a couple of movies featuring the stars of “Dirty Grandpa.” Both “Neighbors” (which has Mantzoukas and Zac Efron) and “The To Do List” (featuring Plaza) are silly, gross-out comedies, but they're smarter than expected and much better executed than this one.