Marking his debut as a writer/director, actor Jake Johnson brings us his funny and mostly charming take on reality shows, Self Reliance, in which he plays Tommy, a middle-aged guy still pining for the girlfriend he lost two years ago (Natalie Morales) and seeming stuck in the rut that is his life. But said life is turned on its head when a limo pulls up next to him and none other than Andy Samberg invites him in, telling him that he will receive $1 million if he agrees to be in a dark-web reality TV show in which assassins from all over the world attempt to kill him for 30 days. At the end of the 30 days, he gets the money. The twist is that he can’t be killed if he’s not alone (mostly to be sure there’s no collateral damage), leading Tommy to recruit a team of unlikely people to help him survive.
First he asks his mother and sisters, but none of them believe his story. And while Tommy lives with his mom and she’s agreed to let him stay there as long as he has a job (which he does), she gets freaked out by the whole situation when Tommy hires a homeless man named James (Biff Wiff) to stay with him at all times, including in his mom’s house. So she kicks him out. Then Tommy finds Maddy (Anna Kendrick), who claims that she’s also in the game. After spending a day together and getting along famously, the two agree to stay joined at the hip, ensuring that neither can be killed and that both will win their respective prizes.
Once Kendrick enters the picture, the film gets exponentially better, which conversely means that when she’s not on screen, Self Reliance struggles a bit to stay interesting and emotionally compelling. As much as the film is a comedy, Tommy is going through some stuff, and Maddy seems like the kind of person who might help push him out of his rut. She even convinces him to visit his now-pregnant ex-girlfriend and finally find out why they didn’t work out, and it’s a tough lesson for him. To keep things interesting, the people running the show and the production “ninjas” who keep tabs (and cameras) on Tommy let him know when something is amiss or that they need to make things more exciting in order to beef up viewership, such as bringing in Tommy’s father (Christopher Lloyd), who abandoned the family when Tommy was just a kid.
The film engages in a lot of wheel-spinning in its final act, and I’m not sure people will find it entirely satisfying, but Johnson (with help from Kendrick) keeps things afloat with a likable personality and a controlled crazy that is light and fun, even when the story goes somewhat off the rails as things wind down. And it’s a bright enough first step as a filmmaker for Johnson that I’m curious to see where he takes things behind the camera and as a performer.
The film is now streaming exclusively on Hulu.
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