Some movies are so terrible you forget that you watched them at all. Movies like Black Adam or The Expendables. Then there are some movies that are so bad that you can’t stop thinking about them. After the credits rolled for Spin me Around, my chain of thoughts for the next hour or so were as follows:
What a waste of time.
What the fuck did I just watch?
Huh?
Did I miss something?
Should I rewatch it?
No.
It’s a waste of time.
Right?
In fact, I am so befuddled by this film that I’m writing a review about it- my first review since I talked about Skinamarink, which was so good that I couldn’t help but write about it.
Alison Brie. Aubrey Plaza. Gabe from The Office. The cheeks woman from Disney channel. The guy from Portlandia is in this. So you’d think it’s gonna be interesting, right? I mean, I banked my interest on the trust that these people chose a good project and a good team to work with. And it’s set in beautiful Italy! Wow, look at that cover. Wow. Interesting.
The first half of the film is really interesting. It’s a remarkably good adaptation of cheap romance novels you’d find at a Safeway, but also in trash cans. A woman works a crap job in a crap city (fuck you Bakersfield) after a bad breakup gets whisked off to an all-expenses paid trip to a romantic country, where she meets the gorgeous CEO who falls in love with her. They go swimming in the warm Italian waters and sail on his yacht and then she’s invited to parties with posh people at rich artist’s homes. Everyone loves her and her dreams are coming true.
But there’s also this really great little mystery being set up in the background. The Italy trip is a bait and switch where they don’t actually stay at a pretty villa, but in a dingy hotel. There are masks in drawers, a woman with her breast out in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ wide shot during a party. Odd kissing on mouths over and over again. Aubrey Plaza’s character plays a Gislaine Maxwell-type who smuggles Alison Brie away from the company trip for the CEO to seduce and manipulate her. The company takes the visitors’ passports. A lot of it is pretty obvious that there’s something going on.
Then the illusion cracks, as Brie and Gabe begin to surmise at what may be happening. Women begin to disappear. One person is clearly bipolar and has lost her medication (not a joke. I don’t know what all of this was about). The CEO acts like a fuckboy and gaslights Brie. There’s an awkward confrontation where the CEO begins blubbering and whining. People begin to die. Then- get this- wild pigs break into an orgy, and it turns out there was nothing sinister going on at all.
At all.
No one was murdered. It’s a shit cop out. Someone looks like they’re dead but only because they sleep with their eyes open. Or someone is hurt, but only passed out. The woman who’s off her meds really is simply having an episode. The CEO was not gaslighting Brie, she was literally paranoid.
The CEO makes a pitiful, desperate plea to get Brie back (because he’s actually in love or something), and she stands up for herself (for some reason) and rejects him. Aubrey Plaza has disappeared halfway into the movie after a really interesting setup and her subplot has literally no effect at all on the overall story. Brie is back at her shit job in a shit city (fuck you Bakersfield) microwaving her shit meal. Then the movie ends. What.
I’m not going to plod on about character arcs and story structure and composition. I’m just mad that the first half of the movie was so fucking interesting and it ended up going nowhere. I mean the way the film perfectly adapts dime novels is incredible, and the little misdirective clues are really great. Only for the film to shit on us by making Brie out to be a paranoid idiot girl who literally contrived a nonsense conspiracy. It felt insulting to the audience. Like. haha. You thought we were doing a wish-fulfillment satire of some sort but then it was a murder mystery and also a comedy but actually it was nothing at all whatsoever.
Spin Me Round is a trash Coen-brothers wannabe movie and I hate it but also it’s pretty good because the last time a film made me feel so much emotion was Skinamarink and I really liked that one. I just wish that the plot threads were concluded properly and there weren’t so many misdirects.
5/10.
Alison Brie and Aubrey Plaza make out in this movie and that’s pretty awesome.
You can stream Spin Me Round on Hulu. But you should not.
85scenes Reviews 