I Used To Be Funny

Directed by Ally Pankiw, I Used To Be Funny follows Rachel Sennott’s Sam Cowell as she attempts to track down the young girl she used to babysit. Filmmaker Pankiw, armed with her own screenplay, delivers an increasingly hit-and-miss endeavor that’s felled by its time-shifting structure, and there’s little doubt, certainly, that Pankiw’s decision to withhold the reveal of what happened to Sam until the movie’s closing minutes proves absolutely disastrous – as the picture does, up to that point, suffer from a frustrating lack of context that adversely colors virtually every encounter and episode experienced by the central character (eg why did Sam break up with her boyfriend, why is she reluctant to get back on stage, etc, etc). I Used To Be Funny‘s failure is a shame, ultimately, given that Pankiw has admittedly elicited strong performances out of her star and various periphery players, with the impact of said work slowly-but-surely rendered moot by the frustrating (and entirely preventable) arms-length atmosphere – which does, in the end, cement the movie’s place as a disappointing misfire that could (and should) have been so much better.

** out of ****