Netflix’s Comedy Drama Star Exploding Bad Looks For All The Right Words

Written by Robert Scucci | Updated 1 hour ago

Imagine a world where greeting card companies have enormous power over their employees and use their resources to control the masses, one cute love letter at a time. This is the world Bob Odenkirk’s Ray Wentworth lives in in 2017 Women’s Daya romantic crime comedy as absurd as it is ambitious. Playing it straight as a crime drama full of deadpan dialogue, Women’s Day it’s as sweet as a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and it looks like a jilted ex-lover who slashes your tires when he realizes you left his Elliot Smith record at your place and finds out you’ve blocked his number when he tries to retrieve it. it.

Although I wanted to like this movie because I have been a fan of Odenkirk’s work since then Mr. Show and Bob and DavidI can’t say that it is Breaking Bad again Better Call Saul the best hour of the star. The storyboard is crazy, but the concept itself could have been better served with a 30-minute runtime instead of being stretched out into a feature-length film that clocked in at 70 minutes.

The Writer’s Problem

Women’s Day begins with Ray Wentworth (Bob Odenkirk), an alcoholic greeting card writer recently divorced who works for AAAAA Hello. Known for writing sweet nothings that are equal parts pithy and profound, Ray is a household name, and his contributions to the greeting card industry are legendary. However, Cormac McCarthy once said that “if there’s a danger in writing at work, it’s in drinking,” and Ray tends to lose his sauce more often than his sanity, leading to massive bouts of writer’s block and a healthy number of blackouts that lead to breakdowns. on his termination from AAAAA Goodbye.

Ray meets a former, and now homeless, colleague named Taft (Larry Fessenden), who left the business to pursue a career as a novelist. Getting a real glimpse of his future through Taft, Ray knows he doesn’t have much time to get his life back on track.

Detailed Setup

In the next three months Women’s Day timeline, Ray went into an alcoholic depression. That is, until Ray approaches his former boss, Stuyvesant (Alex Karpovsky). Stuyvesant explains that the state of California is holding a card-writing contest for a new corporate holiday called Mother’s Day.

One golden rule of competition is that at the moment greeting card workers are not allowed to participate, which means Ray is the right man to get the job done.

When Ray sneaks into his old AAAA office to pick up some supplies, he finds an injured Taft, bleeding from a stab wound. Waking up the next day on his couch after being beaten by an unseen assailant, Ray has a foggy memory of the events of the previous night.

After confronting a homicide detective named Miller (Kevin O’Grady), Ray meets a beautiful woman named Jill (Amber Tamblyn) and discovers that she owns a greeting card store. The sparks between the two soon-to-be lovers quickly ignite, and things start looking up for Ray on the romantic front.

Freshly slapped with a museum-like statue, Ray has a new set of problems to deal with after learning that Miller works for both AAAAA Greetings and Paper Hearts – two rival greeting card companies owned by the Gundy Brothers, Robert (Stacy Keach) and Dillon (never seen on screen ). Warned by Miller that he will be framed to kill Taft if he does not bend to the will of the Gundy brothers, Ray finds himself in the middle of a big plot to make sure that Mother’s Day goes off without a hitch.

It was supposed to be a Comedy Skit

Women’s Day it suffers from one serious problem that undermines its storytelling: it shouldn’t have been a movie. Don’t get me wrong, I admire the beauty of a solid runtime coupled with fast travel to the past, but only if the format makes sense for the story being told. In my mind, Women’s Day it would have been an extended powerhouse skit that stayed in place Mr. Show universe, not unlike the gritty and surreal 1994 infamous “Love and Sausages” produced by. Children in the Hall.

Women’s Day it is not without its charms, however. Narrated by David Lynch, and Steven Michael Quezada (Breaking Bad) as Ray’s crotchety landlord, Munoz, is a well-done comedy with excellent chemistry between its main characters, but it leaves me wanting less, which would be more than enough to get your point across.

You can broadcast Women’s Day on Netflix if drama, deception, and deadpan delivery sound like something you want in your life.