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When the government started talking about “social distancing” to battle the spread of the coronavirus, people around the country wondered how they’d be able to manage without regular interaction with other people. But in Lazy Susan, Sean Hayes plays the kind of person that you’d be happy to distance yourself from.
Lazy Susan stars a gender-bending Hayes as Susan O’Connell, a bored and totally unmotivated middle-aged woman from Wisconsin who goes from menial job to menial job, usually living off the kindness and generosity of her mother (Margo Martindale). When her smug brother, Cameron (Kiel Kennedy), announces that the family won’t be supporting Susan anymore, she’s got to find a backup plan. And when she meets trampoline park owner Phil (Jim Rash) and finds out about an upcoming talent competition, it seems like things might finally be turning around for her.
This slice-of-life adventure follows Susan through the ups and downs of her relationship with Phil, to band practice with her long-suffering best friend, Corrin (Carrie Aizley), through constant squabbles with her family, and on regular trips to Kmart, where she clashes with snarky rival Velvet (Allison Janney).
Admittedly, though, as things start to look up for Susan—and she starts feeling a little more upbeat about where her life is heading—you may feel conflicted. After all, Susan is not a likeable character at all. She’s that irritating mix of awkward and arrogant. She’s completely self-centered yet lacking in self-awareness, and she takes advantage of everyone she can. Still, while the character may not be completely endearing, there’s something about Hayes’s performance that makes her at least entertaining. She has the same spunk as Jack from Will & Grace—but in the body of an earnestly tacky woman who plays the flute in a two-person rock band and does all of her shopping at Kmart.
Fortunately, there are some moments when Susan isn’t entirely exhausting. She has her moments of greatness—those moments when she steps out of her annoyed indifference to stand up for herself...or when she shows just a hint of kindness toward someone other than herself. And it’s those moments that make Susan’s whole self-centered story bearable.
Lazy Susan isn’t exactly an upbeat, feel-good movie. The character’s experiences don’t exactly bring about a life-changing transformation, and her attitude can be pretty maddening at times. But it does have a few entertaining moments—and if you enjoyed Hayes’s shtick on Will & Grace, you’ll like him here, too.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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