'Girl Most Likely' dislikable

If you’re Kirsten Wiig, and you’ve made millions of people die laughing on a regular basis in classic “Saturday Night Live” sketches and movies like “Bridesmaids,” the pressure is on whenever you’re the lead of any movie. The benchmark has been set unbelievably high.

Unfortunately, “Girl Most Likely” doesn’t necessarily live up to that benchmark. It’s not awful, but it’s certainly not Wiig at her finest.

In “Girl Most Likely,” Wiig plays Imogene, a slightly neurotic playwright, who, having failed at writing her own work, is now writing blurbs about plays in New York City. When her wealthy boyfriend breaks up with her, Imogene pretends to have committed suicide to get her boyfriend’s attention. It is her even more neurotic mother, however, who takes custody, and takes her back into her childhood home. Imogene falls for Lee, a tenant in her home, played by Darren Criss of “Glee” fame. Together, with Imogene’s emotionally-challenged brother in tow, they try to get her past life back in order but find that it was never in order to begin with.

The problem with “Girl Most Likely” isn’t that it lacks soul or character — that’s all definitely there. It’s that the film is so honest that it’s not fun to watch. It doesn’t really do all too well with the black comedy a la Robin Williams’s “World’s Greatest Dad,” but it does occasionally work, like in the scene where Wiig pretends to have killed herself. All too often, however, we find ourselves working with a script that feels a bit too deadpan, a little chuggy, and not really funny. It’s a film that I wanted to love, but couldn’t find myself coming to terms with.

While touching and sweet sometimes, the relationship between Lee and Imogene feels forced and contrived in other scenes. The whole element of Zelda, Imogene’s mother, and her boyfriend’s relationship really messes up the tone directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini were going for.

“Girl Most Likely” isn’t bad. It’s endearing and heartwarming, and Wiig does really shine through at some moments. But for what I’ve seen of Wiig, I was expecting a lot more. A comedy that’s not funny isn’t worth much.

I can expect this movie to be forgotten in the same low-key fashion with which it arrived.