NEW TO NETFLIX REVIEW! Jim Hosking is the demented mind behind The Greasy Strangler, and he’s back with another strange – albeit more successful – outing in An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn.
Aubrey Plaza stars as Lulu, who is unhappily married to her manager Shane (Emile Hirsch). When Shane is forced to let someone from the restaurant go, he chooses Lulu, only furthering her disdain for him. “Do you want a cappuccino,” Shane asks one day when he gets home. “I used to make those,” Lulu snaps back.
Shane is faced with some serious money issues, so he robs Lulu’s brother. Shane isn’t all that bright, so naturally, his brother-in-law knows it’s him and demands his money back. When Shane fails to deliver, Lulu’s brother hires Colin (Jemaine Clement) to steal the money back. Colin isn’t all that smart either, so the plan goes awry, and he ends up running off with Lulu (while she has his gun pointed at him, mind you).
“Lulu has been looking for an excuse to flee her life…”
Lulu has been looking for an excuse to flee her life, so she takes off with Colin to go to an event at a hotel. She is fixated on meeting TV personality Beverly Luff Lin (Craig Robinson, communicating through grunts and groans) for reasons that come to light later in the film. While most of the plot of An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn feels like several different movies working at once, they all converge into a bizarre, madcap finale.
Plaza is the perfect choice to lead Hosking’s strange journey and brings her signature charisma to the project. While she’s played variations of this role before, Plaza has a magnetic quality to The Greasy Strangler, Hosking requires exaggerated performances out of his actors and Hirsch fits the role here, playing to the back of the theater as Shane.
As many wild, ridiculous moments An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn has to offer, the movie runs a bit thin towards the end. Most of what happens through the movie offer plenty of laughs, but the premise feels like an extended sketch, which eventually runs out of gas. Even so, there’s enough weirdness to go around, which makes the movie a crazy ride.
“…trademarking his own brand of humor, which will play to a midnight audience.”
Hosking is trademarking his own brand of humor, which will play to a midnight audience. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn is a divergence from The Greasy Strangler (most things are), but Hosking’s will leave his following wanting what comes next from his mind.
An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival in the NEXT competition.
"…Hosking’s strange journey and brings her signature charisma..."
