After seeing her dance to Sia’s “Chandelier” at the Grammys, I’ve come to the conclusion that Kristen Wiig can do just about anything.
She excels in sketch comedy (Saturday Night Live). She can carry a big-screen comedy (Bridesmaids). She can handle cinematic drama (The Skeleton Twins).
Now, with Welcome to Me, Wiig shows she can play a mentally unstable character without turning her into a stereotypical freak. Even more impressively, she does it in a dramatically unstable movie that would collapse into a messy heap without her presence.
Wiig plays Alice Klieg, a woman with what she describes as a “borderline personality disorder,” or what once might have been called manic depression. When she’s not having state-mandated sessions with her psychiatrist (Tim Robbins), she seems to spend her days watching and memorizing taped episodes of Oprah.
Then two things happen that upset her reclusive existence: She goes off her meds, and she wins the lottery. And, I mean, she really wins the lottery, to the tune of $86 million.