‘Kill Me Now’ Review: A Tired Hollywood Suspense Satire Riddled with Borscht Belt Humor

Picture Robert Altman’s The Player remade as a contemporary Woody Allen movie, except Woody is played by a woman who’s even more neurotic than he is, and you’ll get a whiff of indie director Michael Polish’s latest comic concoction, Kill Me Now.

Starring Jacqueline Singer (who also wrote the screenplay) as an anxiety-ridden screenwriter convinced her neighbor is stalking her — did I say the film sounded like The Player? — this rather tired satire of the movie biz gets a few good jokes in but is otherwise stuffed with cringey one-liners and too many kooky characters. Following its premiere at Oldenburg, Kill Me Now should find a lifeline in fests and on streaming.

Kill Me Now

The Bottom Line An intriguing talent in need of a better project.

Venue: Oldenburg Film Festival (Independent)
Cast: Jacqueline Singer, Mena Suvari, Balthazar Getty, Mario Van Peebles, Keith Carradine, Mira Sorvino, Judd Nelson, Colleen Camp, Duke Nicholson
Director: Michael Polish
Screenwriter: Jacqueline Singer
1 hour 49 minutes

With her tiny stature, extra large glasses and nonstop wisecracking, most of it involving her Jewishness and various neuroses, Singer makes one think of the Woodster in more ways than one. But as much as the writer-actress has a unique screen presence, she just can’t dish out top-tier jokes like Allen used to do in his heyday. It also doesn’t help that Polish’s direction is about as far from Annie Hall as L.A. is from New York, with little subtlety and lots of offbeat Hollywood hijinks that already feel out of date by a good decade or so.

Singer plays Victoria, a professional scribe living alone in a ginormous home in the hills, where she’s supposed to be banging out a new screenplay that, predictably, winds up mimicking events in the movie we’re watching. The script has been ordered by a studio run by a coterie of women, with Mira Sorvino (in one of many cameos) playing the crazy boss, until they’re all replaced by a bunch of men and their crazy boss. Posters on the wall for the studio’s hits include such titles as 2 Weddings and a Cremation and The Janitor Who Knew Too Much, which gives you a hint of the film’s brand of humor.

When she’s not writing, which is most of the time, Victoria does a lot of kvetching, fretting about her nonexistent social life or freaking out about the strange man (Duke Nicholson, grandson of Jack) staring at her from the house across the street. It’s not exactly compelling stuff, and the dialogue doesn’t elevate it to a higher comic realm.

“I’m looking for a John Wayne who isn’t gay or Gacy,” Victoria quips about her failed search for a boyfriend, then confesses to her shrink, who’s played by Judd Nelson: “I could never commit suicide. I can’t commit to anything.” Some of the film’s wackest lines go to Mario Van Peebles, who plays Victoria’s Jewish dentist uncle and tells her one night over Shabbat dinner: “I like my wine like my women. Thick, kosher … like a potato knish.” Oy gevalt.

The broad satire also stretches to Victoria’s overfriendly neighbors (Beverly D’Angelo, Keith Carradine) and over-the-top, on-and-off bestie (Mena Suvari), making for a cast of side characters all trying to outdo each other on the Richter scale of quirkiness.

Kill Me Now only becomes interesting when it strips away such eccentricities and gets personal, such as when Victoria embarks on a humiliating, borderline abusive relationship with an L.A. cop (Balthazar Getty). “I’ve never even been with a guy who could finish in the same room with me,” she tells someone early on, and the self-immolating sadness feels more intriguing than any of the Hollywood parody stuff, which was done way better in the Altman movie (whose fictitious studio is alluded to in this film’s production company name, Now More Than Ever) as well as in Seth Rogen’s The Studio, which pays homage to The Player in fun and clever ways.

The prolific Polish broke out with his low-budget cult hit, Twin Falls Idaho, and has since helmed an array of indie features ranging from a Kerouac adaptation (Big Sur) to a sci-fi spoof (Hot Bot) to an old-school Western (Terror on the Prairie). He gives Kill Me Now an, er, polished sheen that lacks gravitas and seems forever stuck in deadpan mode. That’s too bad, because there’s something real and original about Singer that feels so out of place in the artificial paradise known as Hollywood. It would be nice if she could find a more convincing way to prove she’s got what it takes.