Spin Me Round (2022)
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Spin Me Round, directed by Jeff Baena (The Little Hours, Horse Girl), follows the misadventures of Amber (Alison Brie, Community, The Post), the manager of a chain spaghetti restaurant who has tasted so little of life that her dreams are an endless sea of factory-made Alfredo sauce. To Amber’s delight, she is selected for a work retreat where a small group of hand-selected employees (including Tim Heidecker, Zach Woods, Debby Ryan, Ayden Mayeri, and Molly Shannon) will receive personal lessons in the identification of fresh herbs at the very Italian villa where the chain’s suave founder Nick Martucci (Alessandro Nivola) shoots commercials rhapsodizing about all-you-can-eat pasta. You can probably guess what chain they’re lampooning.
These rewards prove to be as inauthentic as the company’s plastic-bagged sauce. Nick turns out to be worse than just a dollar-sign-eyed corporate business-clown; he’s a slimy predator. And at his side is Kat (Aubrey Plaza), a secretive but seemingly in-charge presence in his life. Assistant? Boss? Enabler? To discover the truth of who Nick and Kat are, Amber might fall in so deep she can never get out again. Baena and Brie, the co-writers of the script, successfully merge their subversion of the luxe travel fantasy (e.g. Eat Pray Love) with an update on the sexual harassment screwball comedy that cycled out of favor in the mid-‘80s (e.g. Working Girl). Dark and subversive one minute, sassy and hilarious the next, Spin Me Round is a sweet little razorblade of a movie that, like a heavy pasta dinner, you’ll feel bubbling inside you for hours after it’s over.
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