I want to get something out of the way before we begin: No, Ian, this is not a sequel to 1996’s Mr. Wrong, a film where a still closeted Ms. Ellen DeGeneres has to fend off the stalker Bill Pullman. I see what you did there, but no. What this movie is instead is… weird. Like, at the time of writing I don’t have a “quirky” tag for the blog, but after this I’m giving it some seriously consideration.
Anna Kendrick plays Martha, a character taking the intrinsic quirkiness of Kendrick and dialing it up to near lethal levels. She meets a mysterious man (Sam Rockwell, AKA Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2) who is also lethally quirky. As in he kills people. See, Rockwell’s character is Francis, a former hitman who grew a conscience and now kills the people who hire him to kill people. While wearing a red clown nose. He pointedly never lies to Martha, but she assumes this nameless man she’s going on a date with is joking when he says he killed a guy in the parking lot. Thrown into the mix is Frances’ former mentor (Tim Roth) and a mob guy named Von who wants to make it look like his brother hired Francis, so that Francis would kill the brother and then Von would take over the family. This convoluted plan is made worse by Von being played by James Ransone, AKA Deputy So & So from Sinister and Sinister 2 (yes, that’s the only name given to him in those films, and he’s the main character of the sequel). Anyway, Martha gets kidnapped by Von so Francis has to SAVE MARTHA!!! Sorry not sorry. Martha kills Von now that she’s developed the power to mentally slow time down during a fight–taught to her by Francis–and they go off to be a crazy, quirky, murderous couple. Rapper RZA was also there.
There is a lot to unpack with this movie. Martha falls for a man who refuses to tell her his name and constantly makes “jokes” about murdering people. Those aren’t red flags; those are a factory that makes only red flags. But it’s okay, because Martha is deranged, too! It’s a romantic comedy where our protagonists are just insane. They’re not necessarily bad people… Well, okay, Martha is a pretty shitty friend. The last time we see her roommate Sophie is when Francis locks her in a closet for the unforgivable sin of freaking out when she thinks an FBI agent has been killed by Martha’s nameless boyfriend. Like, they’re not full on sociopaths but they are pretty cavalier about killing people. Bad people, granted, but still.
This movie would be weird enough on its own, but turns out Anna Kendrick was also in The Voices, a romantic comedy with Ryan Reynolds. The gist of the plot is that his cat tells him to murder people. Is this… some sort of weird romantic comedy subgenre? “Quirky psycho meet cute?” It is a fetish? Don’t answer that last one…
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