ViewGuide

Created Sep 03, 2015 10:21PM PST • Edited Sep 17, 2015 11:33PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Very Good 3.5

   Mistress America mines the wandering desires of two young women in a fitful search for laughs and insight. It often succeeds, though not without wallowing in more than a little preciousness.

   Greta Gerwig fans won’t mind, nor Noah Baumbach fans. Those partners in art and life cowrote it. Thus it’s extremely idiosyncratic, fixating on young people with more smarts than intelligence, as is his wont.

   The story is clever, often amusing and of-the-moment. A college freshman who is having trouble fitting in finds a social lifeline in a 30 year-old family friend who appears to have life figured out. The fact that this incipient big sister has major problems of her own drives more irony than comedy, but so be it.

   Greta Gerwig and Lola Kirke form an engaging faux-sibling partnership, enough that we’re willing to go along with their silly hijinks. Good thing they’re only asking us for a fling. Mrs. America this ain’t.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Greta Gerwig is an oddball actress, rather affected and more idiosyncratic than ha-ha funny. Still, she’s plenty watchable in a role she wrote for herself.

   Lola Kirke has the unenviable task of playing a sad-sack girl, but does it well.

   • Kathryn Erbe of Law & Order fame is vivid as her Mother.
   • Heather Lind jumps off screen as Gerwig’s rival. Lind is also a highlight in the TV series TURN – Washington’s Spies.
   • Michael Chernus is oddly charismatic as a portly rich guy.
   • Jasmine Cephas Jones is pretty and amusing as a jealous girlfriend
   • Matthew Shear is dweeby as her boyfriend.

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars OK 2.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Is Mistress America more a Greta Gerwig or Noah Baumbach film? While they’ve apparently merged their personal and professional lives of late, I’m not at all familiar with her work, so can’t quite say. As for his work, Mistress America is much more Margot at the Wedding than Fantastic Mr. Fox.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music OK 2.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.8

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0