An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn Review

An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn poses a couple of questions throughout the almost 2 hour run time. For exaple, ‘what’ ‘who’ and, most importantly, ‘why?’ Beverly Luff Linn is an incredibly dry comedy that only half works. All of the characters are quite unique to say the least, and that’s the movie’s greatest strength. Each of the main four characters are played by some of my favorite comedic actors working today, namely, Jemaine Clement (What We Do In the Shadows/Flight of the Concords) and Matt Berry (IT Crowd/Toast of London). I’m not quite as familiar with Aubrey Plaza and Craig Robinson’s work, but they also offered good performances. However, these are only half of the main characters. It’s almost as if there are two stories going on at once. Personally, I could have cared less about the second half, albeit having not as much screen time. The other group consisted of Aubrey Plaza’s character’s boyfriend. Personally, in this section, I found the comedy to be incredibly over the top. This style is fine, however, when compared to some of the most iconic dry humor stars of the modern era giving some great performances, these bits just fall flat. At the beginning of the film, I was admittedly worried, as it only focused on the boyfriend camp’s story. However, as it fell into the story of the main four, I found myself enjoying the movie more and more. That being said, the final act also doesn’t seem to fit. While I certainly prefer it over the first, the emotional plot overtaking the final 20-ish minutes felt incredibly forced. There are really two types of comedic movies, both can benefit the purpose of the film or not. The first kind of a comedic film is one that goes all out comedy, probably to more popular of the two. This style works in films like What We Do In the Shadows, but fails in other works such as 1941. On the other hand, there are movies that are comedies, while having strong dramatic themes. In this case, movies like Jojo Rabbit work well, while certain Edgar Wright films (i.e. The World’s End) don’t work. At the beginning, Beverly Luff Linn fit into the first category, and in those regards, it worked. However, at the end when they explained everything that happened in the previous two acts, it got stuck into the latter category, and not in a good way. When this darker subject matter came up, my mind raced, trying to find a solution to why this sudden shift happened. The closest I got is that a man on drugs was trying to cope with loss, but I still can’t be certain on that. Overall, I found the movie to be semi-entertaining for the most part, but, absolutely failing come the final act’s resolution. Nevertheless, it’s a magical one night experience that, for the most part, falls extremely flat. 5.5/10.