Written by Sam Bain
Directed by Jamie Babbit
Starring Drew Barrymore, T.J. Miller, Michael Zegen and Holland Taylor
Running time: 1 hour and 41 minutes
MPAA rating: R for language throughout including sexual references and for drug use

by Audrey Callerstrom

I have a friend that really doesn’t like Drew Barrymore. He thinks she’s absolutely annoying and a horrible actress. I disagree. I think she is a fine actor, for what a movie calls for. She’s rarely stepped outside the boundaries of comedy, and even the worst actor can coast if the script is at least fine. She’s also likable, and likability is important in Hollywood. Additionally, I feel like we (the colloquial we) “grew up” with her. We caught the end of her tabloid era, when she was wearing daisies in her hair, flashing David Letterman and estranged from her mom. Then she became a little softer, coasting along in audience-pleasing comedies. Once she had children, she became an amiable, “I’m one of you” dorky mom, who now has a talk show where she opens up about her divorce and gushes about how she likes comfortable clothes. One feels that if you were alone in a room with her, she wouldn’t be scrolling her phone. She would be cross-legged in a chair, pillow in her lap, asking you questions.

It’s hardly Drew’s fault that The Stand In is such joyless noise. Nor is it the fault of director Jamie Babbit, who wrote and directed 1999’s But I’m A Cheerleader and has since directed for television. The Stand In has an incomprehensible, lazy, repetitive script. It doesn’t make sense. Drew plays Candy Black, an actress famous for her slapstick comedies. The opening credits show a list of her fake films, including a stoner comedy called Pippi Bongstocking. In every film where Candy falls, she looks directly at the camera and says, “Hit me where it hurts!” a phrase I have never heard before, in or outside of a film. It’s a catchphrase that Candy says across all her films, which supposedly have different writers. It’s not like classic lines get repeated by actors across all their films. Does writer Sam Bain (Peep Show, Four Lions) know this? I think he does, but he doesn’t care. His check cashes no matter what. The actors can walk around saying “bleep blop blorp” and he still gets paid. They may as well be saying “bleep blop blorp.” 

Candy is tired of acting and has a meltdown on the set of a film where she maims her co-star, played by Ellie Kemper. Which, sure. OK. Candy is ordered to go to rehab, but she doesn’t want to. So she has her longtime stand in, Paula (Drew in a prosthetic nose) go in her place. Eventually Paula becomes Candy, going on an apology tour at the request of her assistant (a very irritated T.J. Miller in a Friar Tuck haircut). Candy (born Cathy Tyler) wants to leave the spotlight to meet Steve (Michael Zegen, Benji from Frances Ha) a man she met on a website called “Carpentry Talk” that has a user interface from 2002, with a giant font and one centered stock photo of a chair. See, Candy/Cathy (like it matters) got into film “accidentally” but really wanted to be a carpenter. Sure! I mean, Michael Schoeffling from Sixteen Candles did some movies and then just disappeared and now he’s a hunky dad making birdhouses in Vermont (probably). It’s not like “escaping” Hollywood should have been a difficult thing for Candy to do. She mentions that she had been acting for 20 years, so she started when she was in her 20s. Why not just make a couple films and then bounce?

I actually kind of liked Drew in two roles, at least for the first twenty minutes, until the film becomes an intolerable mess. With Paula, she does a Jane Adams impression, bugging out her eyes and speaking quietly and nervously. This film doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s never particularly funny and the emotional beats are false and unearned. Zegen is charming and genuine and worthy of a better film. There are some baffling moments in this film. Naturally, Candy does the talk show circuit so we see Kelly Ripa, Jimmy Fallon, some E! News anchors I don’t know, etc. But in one scene Lena Dunham (as herself, presumably) tells Candy what an inspiration she is for actresses “like herself.” Dunham is not an actress. I don’t think she would even consider herself an actress. In another scene, Steve confesses that he had to change his name because of an embarrassing moment from his past, a photo of himself urinating on a Holocaust memorial, which he shows to Candy on his… flip phone? Which can display a high-res photo? The Stand In answers the question no one asked: what if the film Dave actually starred Drew Barrymore and was a complete waste of everyone’s time?

Available in select theaters, on demand and digital today, December 11.