Welcome to Me | Film review - Kristen Wiig's lottery winner buys her own talk show | Movie Talk | What's on TV

(Image credit: © Vertigo Films)

A funny and touching Kristen Wiig walks an acting tightrope in this dark comedy about a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder who quits her meds and buys her own TV talk show after winning an $86million lottery jackpot.

Her show’s only subject, Wiig’s Alice Klieg uses her platform to rake over decades-old grievances, offer half-baked nutritional advice and even neuter her pet dogs live on air.

Welcome to Me doesn’t purport to be a serious study of mental illness – and it doesn’t make the most of its superb supporting cast, which includes James Marsden, Wes Bentley, Joan Cusack, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Robbins – but its satirical jabs at car-crash TV and the cults of vacant celebrity and extreme oversharing are timely and welcome.

Certificate 15. Runtime 84 mins. Shira Piven

Welcome To Me is available on DVD from Precision Pictures and on demand from Sky Store & Virgin Movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0KEe-hMsLg

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.