Better Late Then Never

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Like a car accident in the next lane, I watched 30 minutes of this, wondering if it was ever going to get any less uncomfortable. Eventually, I drove past the accident, then I couldn't even see it in my mirror, and I found something else to watch.

Welcome to Me is a distinctly odd movie about a woman with a boderline personality disorder diagnosis and millions of dollars in lottery winnings who decides to have a vanity TV show all about her. It's an interesting idea, and it kept my attention, but I feel it wasn't quite the movie it might have been.First off I'd like to talk about borderlines, because I've known a couple. Googling around I've found a few articles describing this movie as either a good or bad portrayal of BPD. Since BPD simply means you exhibit a large number of traits from a list (impulsivity, self-harm, etc.), Alice is acceptable as a borderline. And since being borderline can exist with other conditions, like depression or narcissism, you can't really complain about less typical borderline behavior.That being said, Alice doesn't seem like borderlines I've known, and lacks some commonly known BPD qualities. For example, borderlines are often very good at feigning normalcy. I once saw a BPD friend, ranting and raving after sneaking out of a psyche ward and trying to kill herself, instantly become calm and rational when the cops came to check on her. Many psychiatrists don't like working with borderlines because they can feel tricked when that patient convinces their doctor that they're fine now right before a suicide attempt. Alice, on the other hand, is just purely odd. And her oddness seems to come entirely from her mental illness. It is as though Kristen Wiig was so concerned with getting the symptoms right that she never thought about who Alice would be without her mental illness. But in truth, people with mental illnesses have traits that have nothing to do with being mentally ill (although some psychiatrists do try to fit everything about their patients into their diagnosis).Because of this, Alice is an interesting character but not a really compelling one. Meanwhile, the intriguing premise never quite gels. Is the movie a satire of celebrity and our fascination with trashy talk shows? Is it an attempt to portray mental illness? Is it an attempt to get laughs out of mental illness? I never really felt this movie had a vision, or a point of view. Like the main character, the story feels like it's a bunch of ideas stuck together rather than a cohesive drama.While the movie feels a little undercooked, I did enjoy it. Wiig may seem more like a mildly autistic narcissist than a borderline, and the story may feel unsubstantial, but it is amusing to watch Alice create her entirely peculiar show and get into weird dietary fixations. The movie may not make a coherent whole, but the pieces are pretty good in themselves.

This is actually a good film that misled by its low rating. But the end should have been really better, other than that the rest of the film was enjoyable. Another small scale movie and another excellent performance by Kristen Wiig. The story of a single woman with the borderline personality disorder. After winning the $80 million through the lottery draw, she decides to own a television show to talk about her personal life. She begins to lose her close ones as the result of her out talk about them, but can she fix it and how is the remaining.This is a unique story, not like that you see it often in the movies. Apart from Wiig, the rest of the supporting cast was not bad, but very sad to see such a good looking wonderful actress like Linda Cardellin in a small role. If you hate slow pace, this movie might be an average to you, but others who won't mind will find it better. What I surprised to know is that most of the film critics thumb upped for it than the film goers. But I still suggest it, mainly for the film fanatics, just give it a try and so you might like it than what you've heard about it.7/10

Welcome to Me offers a curious combination of drama and humor which adapts itself well to the tragicomic sensibility cultivated by Kristen Wiig in Saturday Night Live through many years. Under more fortunate circumstances, the material would have been perfect for her... unfortunately, the interesting premise of Welcome to Me is betrayed by a weak and confusing screenplay which doesn't know what to say, or what road to take in order to find its inspiration. This is the type of "hard of classify" film which fails in its combination of genres. The main character had potential, but the screenplay leaves her adrift with badly raised and developed scenes. I was left with the impression that screenwriter Eliot Lawrence and director Shira Piven were afraid of making something too "mainstream", something which could have compromised their "indie" sensibility; and that's why they decided to focus on the most insipid elements of the narrative. That might seem a challenging and innovative attitude, but I think it was a mistake not to take a more accessible or compassionate tone to make the main character's arc more pleasant, or at least bring it a more satirical angle. The supporting cast of Welcome to Me includes good actors such as Wes Bentley, Linda Cardellini, Joan Cusack, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Robbins, James Marsden and Alan Tudyk, whose characters form a micro-universe of drama and dysfunction which would have been interesting to examine. However, Welcome to Me didn't take advantage of those circumstances, preferring to adopt a distant and indifferent tone which never transports us to the main character's world. We watch every step of her emotional crisis, but we never feel it. Welcome to Me could have been an intelligent and reflexive movie; but its lack of conviction and vague ideology make it feel like a cursory introduction to a character who deserved to be much more examined. There needs to be something more than "look at the weirdo!" to capture the audience.