The story is so messed up it is mesmerizing. It is a unique look at someone who is dead and offers an engaging voyage of discovery and misadventure.

It's pre-2000 NYC. Mary McCrawley (Heather Graham) gets fired from her temp job. She comes home to find her loser temp boyfriend Primo Schultz (John Corbett) dead in front of the TV. She's left with his dog. It's a long line of loser temp boyfriends. Zoe (Katherine Moennig) is her best friend. She's mildly taken with Joey Lucas (Griffin Dunne)'s credit card. Helene (Gina Gershon) tells her about Primo who seems to be completely different than the loser that she knew. Howard (Scott Michael Foster) inspires her to write about him and enter into a contest. She finds his baby mamma Sue Watt and joins her band.I love Graham but she's not a lead comedian type. She's more of a straight man who can do odd deadpan. I can't tell if the material is actually funny but the movie isn't. It's mildly quirky at best. This character would be cute as a twenty something slacker. As a thirty something, it's no longer cute. I don't hate this except for its weak attempts at being funny.

I guess this movie is a specialized taste, given the discrepancy between my review and the average rating, but I thought it was freaking hysterical, with the advantage of being substantially original.Ever the optimist, I watch (or at least start to watch) a lot of so-called comedies and, believe me, most of what's called comedy is basically "story that couldn't find a better genre". Which is my way of saying that I appreciate a real comedy. Having said that, this is not your traditional Inspector Clouseau or American Pie sort of comedy --- creating funny situations that usually involve someone looking silly, slapstick, misunderstanding, that sort of thing. It's the harder, and more rarely successful, comedy of the absurd --- a ridiculous situation, where everyone behaves just slightly off-kilter. Much of that sort of thing relies on embarrassment, ie excruciating comedy, and while I like my Sasha Baron-Cohen in small doses, I find that hard to watch. But this is something completely different. The situation is (and remains) hysterical because our heroine has such ridiculous reactions to everything, starting with her utter lack of concern at coming home to her dead boyfriend. In addition to the absurdity of each successive stage of the story, Mary, the main character, is a marvelous collection of incongruous attributes. She appears to be the embodiment of a dozen comedy stereotypes, but she's not quite any of them. She's utterly self-centered and uninterested in anything that's not to her immediate benefit or interest --- but she's Heather Graham and so, not just pretty but sweet and innocent looking, that you can't really believe her narcissism. She's a slacker and a moocher --- but she does have some real talents. She's irresponsible and short-sighted --- but she is also competent where it matters. I'd put it in the same sort of category as _Violet & Daisy_, or _Family Weekend_, or _The Big Hit_, three other movies I can think of with ludicrous plots and characters, that all work because they buy into the storyline enough that you care what happens, while simultaneously playing up how insane their story is.

*Very Minor Potential Spoiler* 7.3 Stars. This is a film based upon a novel. It's 1999 in New York. Our leading lady is an apathetic yet flaky woman who is leaving an office building where she has just been fired from her job as a temp. She isn't affected by it much, it's an inconvenience and it seems she's no stranger to getting fired nor quitting. She comes home and tells the lounging silhouette of her jobless boyfriend Primo all about her day before eventually realizing he's stone dead. While the remote still rests in his hand, she nonchalantly presses a button to change the channel before she calls authorities who question her. We learn she's been in a relationship and living with her boyfriend for 6 months, but that it wasn't a relationship she considered serious. Neither party was particularly invested. The next day, Mary and her best friend Zoe have a chance encounter with an art dealer who was romantic with Primo in his college days. The art dealer reveals Primo to have been someone completely different than the aimless, loser boyfriend she'd found dead in her apartment. He's an acclaimed writer and artist?! He went to college?! He actually had a romantic connection with another human?! With piqued curiosity and graced with ample free time, Mary sets out to learn more about the dead boyfriend she never cared to know. Sordid and bizarre facts are discovered sometimes by pure chance, other times from candid tales shared by the very peculiar people Primo had been involved with during his life. Mary begins to feel vested in something and no longer so indifferent about her dead boyfriend, nor about her own life as this wacky, twisted story unfolds. Heather Graham stars as Mary, and although Heather is 46 years old she portrays a woman who is 26-32 and does it so well that I did a great deal of fact checking to convince myself that this was not a film that was actually shot in the late 90's/early 2000's. The filmmakers certainly could've gotten a 29 year old star for the role but their casting decision could not be more perfect. Graham was the late 90's/early 200's IT GIRL, and that made this somewhat nostalgic movie even more appealing. Everything was set perfectly to the time period, the fashions, the music, the technology and scenery, the dialogue and overall energy.The film is billed as a comedy, I didn't find anything worthy of uproarious belly laughter but I stayed amused and chuckled out especially near the ending. There were more attempts at humor than were being conveyed, still I enjoyed it. There are a few sequences where we see into Mary's creative imagination and bizarre little scenes play out either of her past or of her dead boyfriend performing ridiculously. These didn't contribute much. As is the case with many books-turned-movie's, the driving force is good storytelling that engages the audience. We not only learn a lot about the quirky characters in this story, but we have good fun in the process and are sent for a few dizzying loops.