Girlfriend’s Day – ½

Girlfriend’s Day (Michael Stephenson, 2017)

Full Original – Comedy/Mystery

 

Ranking pretty high (or should that be low?) on my list of the all-time worst Netflix Original Films, Girlfriend’s Day is yet another disastrously awful, low-budget, lazy “comedy” made by the service. The premise of the film is that a down on his luck greeting card writer Ray (Bob Odenkirk), once reputed to be the best in the business, is fired after years of mediocrity caused in part by his failed marriage. He spirals into a depression only to be offered a chance at redemption in the form of a contest to create cards for a new holiday to be invented by the greeting card companies, the eponymous Girlfriend’s Day. But the competition between writers and card manufacturers is intense, resulting in a murder in which Ray is a falsely-accused suspect.

What should have maybe been a five minute comedy sketch thus gets stretched to 70 paradoxically excruciating and tedious minutes. Sketches, a form that star, writer and producer Bob Odenkirk has a great deal of experience with, is where you want to test out a premise like “imagine if greeting card writers took themselves as seriously as stereotypical literary authors.” At least then when the sketch gets no laughs you will have only wasted five minutes of your audience’s lives. Trying it out in a feature film on the other hand creates a situation in which after 5 minutes you get the same result as what would have happened in the sketch version, but over an hour is still left to go. So it is that a film going for deadpan, so-dumb-it’s-funny just ends up being dumb, very dumb.

The film tries to graft this comic premise onto a Phil Marlowe-type film noir storyline, but the tongue-in-cheek tone and some lazy plotting leaves this mystery without any actual interest for the audience or any feeling that there is something at stake. The mystery plot – much like the equally lame comedy mystery Handsome – feels even more half-assed than the attempts at comedy.

The only time I laughed during the movie was at the first mention of Shitfoot, a homeless man who fights in underground videos that are a running joke in the film. Once the initial laugh at this character’s name is over, even that joke becomes repetitive and ultimately more annoying than anything else. That said, and however evil it is that bum fight videos exist, I would rather watch this film-within-the-film or even fight Shitfoot himself than have to watch Girlfriend’s Day again.

 

Netflix Tendencies

 

One Star Wonder

There are a number of stars that appear in this film, but it is Bob Odenkirk’s film through and through in terms of marketing and promotion, screen time and creative input.

 

Netflix Stars

Writer/Producer/Star Bob Odenkirk is a fixture on Netflix. Much of this is due to his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which are licensed the world over on Netflix. It’s likely not a coincidence that Steven Michael Quezada, aka Gomie from Breaking Bad, was cast in the film. (Much is made of how important Netflix was to the popularity of Breaking Bad, but I wonder if anyone has pointed that the opposite is also equally true.) Netflix also virtually revived Odenkirk and David Cross’s series Mr. Show in the form of W/Bob & Dave. (Coincidentally, Cross’s wife Amber Tamblyn co-stars in the film.)

Natasha Lyonne also makes an appearance here, yet another comedy cameo from the Orange is the New Black star.

 

Pointless Cameos

Andy Richter, Ed Begley Jr. and Lyonne all pop up in the film, adding little if anything to the movie.