In the unpretentious and delightful comedy Spin Me Round, Alison Brie plays the assistant manager of an Italian chain restaurant who wins a corporate junket – a week at the CEO’s villa in Tuscany. She arrives in Italy with a cadre of peers, misfits all, to discover that they aren’t exactly at the villa and the corporate retreat isn’t exactly what it seems. The charismatic zillionaire CEO (Alessandro Nivola) seems to be grooming them – but not for corporate advancement. Many laughs ensue.
Alison Brie, so good as Trudy Campbell in Mad Men, has proven to have a wonderful gift for comedy. She ably works her Girl Next Door quality to reflect the more overtly zany characters around her. Brie co-wrote Spin Me Round’s screenplay with director Jeff Baena. Baena and Brie had worked together on The Little Hours and Horse Girl (which they also co-wrote).
Spin Me Round is a showcase for comic actors:
- If you can’t get enough of Zach Woods’s Silicon Valley character, he returns with his naive, overly nice, worshipful devotee – with the capacity for a massive meltdown.
- Aubrey Plaza (director Baena’s wife) plays archly cynical and dangerously edgy better than anyone.
- Molly Shannon can convincingly play a deranged, over-the-top character because she just commits so entirely.
- Fred Armisen is as we rarely, if ever, see him – as a macho, oily Silvio Berlusconi type.
- Nivola, known mainly for his dramatic roles (The Many Saints of Newark), can be very funny.
- Ego Nwodin, in the tiniest of roles as Brie’s Skypeing roommate, is just perfect.
One of the funniest threads in Spin Me Round is the send-up of The Olive Garden, the restaurant chain so obviously parodied here, The chain’s managers know shockingly little about Italian cuisine. And you may never eat alfredo sauce again.
In real life, wild pigs are not funny; here, they are very, very funny.
I saw Spin Me Round, before its release, at a well-attended screening at Cinequest, where the crowd loved it. It opens this weekend in LA, but I haven’t located a screen in the Bay Area.