Susan is a middle aged middle-American woman who has resisted employment or any form of life success for her entire life. That's it, that's the plot.
"Lazy Susan" wants to be a quirky movie about unlikable characters whom we come to like by the end of the movie, but it never quite hits the marks in any way, shape or form. Hayes stars as the titular Susan, a choice that never quite lives up to its intent. He plays the character straight-forwardly: she's a cis woman, not trans, nor are we ostensibly supposed to laugh because the woman character is played by a cis man actor. So what's the reason for the casting in the first place, then?
Nothing about Susan is likable: she's not just lazy, she's rude, self-centered and crass. Yet the writing and acting never take her quite toward 'quirky' enough to make her interesting. Likewise, the characters around her - a mean brother, an enabling mother, an accepting best-friend - are not fleshed out enough for us to understand their motivations.
By the end of the film we've come to understand that Susan became the way she is because no one in her life ever made her feel special, and the act of kindness from a virtual stranger seems to light enough of a spark in her to put together the bare minimum to become a functioning adult, but it happens in the course of the last five minutes with such randomness that it feels hollow.
Also the occasional gross out humor feels so misplaced that it's jarring.
The movie isn't good, and it's hard to pinpoint why other than that it tries so hard to be something that it's not, yet at the same time isn't anything at all.
"Lazy Susan" wants to be a quirky movie about unlikable characters whom we come to like by the end of the movie, but it never quite hits the marks in any way, shape or form. Hayes stars as the titular Susan, a choice that never quite lives up to its intent. He plays the character straight-forwardly: she's a cis woman, not trans, nor are we ostensibly supposed to laugh because the woman character is played by a cis man actor. So what's the reason for the casting in the first place, then?
Nothing about Susan is likable: she's not just lazy, she's rude, self-centered and crass. Yet the writing and acting never take her quite toward 'quirky' enough to make her interesting. Likewise, the characters around her - a mean brother, an enabling mother, an accepting best-friend - are not fleshed out enough for us to understand their motivations.
By the end of the film we've come to understand that Susan became the way she is because no one in her life ever made her feel special, and the act of kindness from a virtual stranger seems to light enough of a spark in her to put together the bare minimum to become a functioning adult, but it happens in the course of the last five minutes with such randomness that it feels hollow.
Also the occasional gross out humor feels so misplaced that it's jarring.
The movie isn't good, and it's hard to pinpoint why other than that it tries so hard to be something that it's not, yet at the same time isn't anything at all.