An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn movie review (2018)
I don’t want to give the impression that I myself was genuinely exasperated with these questions as I took in the deliberately stilted acting by Emile Hirsch, Aubrey Plaza, Sky Elobar and Zach Cherry in this scene. The circumscribed world Hosking creates here is deliberately unfixed in terms of period, just as the situations and dialogue are contrived for a particular feeling of unreality. Hirsch’s coffee-shop manager is named “Shane Danger,” and after a human-resources guy representing the “Bob’s” chain of which this coffee shop is a part tells him he’s got to lay off an employee, he chooses to fire his own wife, Lulu, played by Plaza.
Discussing with his two remaining employees how they’re going to weather the storm of a shrinking business, Shane announces, “I think positive all the time. Okay, I have to take a shit. Can you guys watch the shop for 25 minutes?” On his departure, the guys wonder why he needs 25 minutes.
Although Lulu tells Shane she doesn’t hold her firing against him, there is a fissure in their marriage, one that widens when Lulu learns of an upcoming stage engagement of one Beverly Luff Linn—“for one magical night.” A look through the photos in Lulu’s underwear drawer show her and Luff Linn in amorous clinches. Lulu has a past.
There ensues Shane and his buddies robbing the convenience store of Lulu’s brother (played by Sam Dissanayake). After which Lulu’s brother hires the rather shy and almost recessive gunman, or maybe the more accurate term is man who owns a gun, Colin, to get that money back. A confrontation leads to Lulu running off with Colin and the cash box to the hotel where Beverly Luff Linn, played by a very prosperous-looking Craig Robinson, is staging his magical night. Colin is besotted with Lulu but Lulu is all business, whatever that business actually is. As for Beverly Luff Linn, he is in the company of a male manager/partner who looks after his every need, and responds to everything he sees with guttural grunts and growls. Is he some kind of Frankenstein’s monster, or just in dire gastronomical distress? Mostly the latter, as it happens.
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