Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lady of the Manor’ on Amazon Prime, an Anemic Comedy That Fails Stars Melanie Lynskey and Judy Greer

Now on Amazon Prime, Lady of the Manor is notable for being the directorial debut of Justin Long (best known for his acting in Dodgeball, Drag Me to Hell and, uh, Tusk) and his brother Christian Long. It’s also a rare starring vehicle for Melanie Lynskey, playing a slob who forges an unusual friendship with Judy Greer’s fancy Southern lass – unusual because said lass is long dead, and a ghost. Lynskey and Greer carrying a screwy comedy? Sounds good on paper. Let’s see how it works in execution.

LADY OF THE MANOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Lady Wadsworth (Greer) was murdered by her total crapsteak of a husband in 1875, in her mansion, where she still manifests as a genteel apparition. CUT TO: Hannah (Lynskey) a serially sweatpantsed huffer of marijuana smoke who, through a series of quasi-comedic occurrences, loses her job delivering kush and edibles and somehow lands a gig as a tour guide at Wadsworth Manor. The job requires living in the grand old house and pretending to be Lady Wadsworth by dressing up in era-specific gowns and regurgitating facts in a ladylike manner, which she’s really bad at, because she’s always high as crap.

One notable point to highlight: Hannah was hired by Tanner Wadsworth (Ryan Philippe), a failson who only wants to shtoink her. She’s game, because she’s apparently attracted to sockless doucheboys in linen pants. But when she goes to jump his bones, Lady Wadsworth appears and tut-tuts until Hannah goes to bed unsatisfied. Soon, Hannah ceases resisting the idea that ghosts don’t exist, and allows the Lady to teach her how to be a lowercase-l lady, in the Southern tradition. In return, Hannah explains to her what “cockblocking” is.

Methinks Lady Wadsworth might be more approving of Hannah’s interest in Max (Justin Long), a historian and professor she meets while giving a particularly terrible manor tour. He’s such a nice guy, he agrees to help Hannah try to exorcize the ghost, inspiring a scene in which they clean up her room because she’s a slob, and he finds her considerable collection of dildos, about which she shows no shame, and good for her. She doesn’t have to answer to anyone for that. Anyway, this selection of situations is all going somewhere, sort of, eventually.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Considering how unmemorable Lady of the Manor is, it stands to reason that I can’t remember the movies it reminds me of.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m sad to report that the at-best occasionally inspired material fails the Lynskey-Greer pairing, who get more than their share of fart jokes to execute. Lynskey at least finds a little more footing with her character, for what it’s worth.

Memorable Dialogue: Hannah just isn’t in the mood to have sex with Tanner, so she comes up with an excuse:

Hannah: I have diarrhea.

Tanner: Well, I guess we’ll just cross that bridge when we come to it.

Sex and Skin: Only a couple fully-clothed near-misses for Tanner and Hannah that an HBO guide from 1983 would surely dub “sexual situations.”

Our Take: I hereby quote dialogue in which the movie reviews itself for me: “I get it, I just don’t find it to be humorous.” Philippe and Lynskey share a prickly moment or two where they wring a laugh from the script, but Greer, a gifted and frankly underutilized comedian, is wasted here, and Long couldn’t be any blander if he was unseasoned white rice. The material never gives a talented cast opportunities to elevate their characters beyond archetypes: The Slacker, the Prude, the Nice Guy, the Jerk.

The result is a comedy so tonally featherweight, so anemically plotted, it practically disintegrates before our eyes. Hannah’s character arc progresses at such an acute angle, it barely registers. The film is lackadaisically directed, and is a collection of stapled-together scenes for an hour, before it decides it needs to try to tell a story. The jokes are all low-to-middlebrow; opportunities to lampoon South-UHN sophisticates go unexploited; stabs at un-PC comedy are DOA; and there are two dopey musical montages, which is almost criminal in a 96-minute movie. I’d fart in the movie’s general direction, but it’d take it as a compliment.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Lady of the Manor is a waste of talent, and your time.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Where to stream Lady of the Manor