I have had many comedic actors explain to me
the enjoyment that they had working on a film with many of their friends. This
is an easy concept to understand, even for those of us on the outskirts of the
entertainment industry can relate to the ways in which a poor job can be
improved by co-workers we can also call friends. Apparently, the case is also
true for the filming of bad screenplays, because there are countless awful
films made by a group of people that like each other. Perhaps this comes from
an unwillingness to be honest about the content that doesn’t work, or maybe
having your buddies with you at work can be more of a distraction to the
creative process. Whatever the reason, the group of friends, couples, and
former co-workers that came together to make Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife should be ashamed at how utterly
unsuccessful this dark comedy is. How ironic that the tagline is “Real Friends
Do the Dirty Work.”
Written,
directed, produced, and starring Scott Foley, Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife also co-stars his real-life wife, Marika Dominczyk,
along with an assortment of other friends and their spouses. Patrick Wilson and
his wife Dagmara Dominczyk (sister of Marika) are also in the cast of couples,
along with real-life couple Amy Acker and James Carpinello (who also brought
along family member Ava Carpinello for her unimpressive film debut), and
Foley’s former “Felicity” co-star, Greg Grunberg. Oddly enough, it isn’t even
the nepotistic casting that makes this film impossible to endure, but rather
Foley’s complete ignorance of both the comedy genre and the darker sub-genre
that the first half of this film seems attempting to exist in.
The impossibly
one-dimensional plot involves a group of friends (Acker, Foley, Dominczyk, and
both Carpinellos) who grow increasingly irritated by the emasculation of their
longtime friend, Ward (Donald Faison), whose wife has morphed into a
monumentally rude tyrant after the birth of their first child. Stacey
(Dominczyk) is an awful person to the point of ridiculous caricaturing, asking
for a more dramatic death scene than the anti-climactic death by cake that
accidentally occurs during a birthday party. The remainder of the film is a
failed attempt at comedy-of-errors as the friends try to cover up the accident
turned into murder, with the prying eyes of a cop living next door to worry
about.
Dark comedies
can begin such as this one, but Foley’s unwillingness to commit to the ugliness
of these actions makes the second half of the film feel like a weak-ass apology
for the first half, which was not nearly edgy enough for the filmmaker to shy
away so quickly. They try far too hard to justify the actions of the group of
friends, rather than seeing them fall apart and turn on each other like this
narrative needed for the second half to be at all engaging. Instead, we are
forced to watch a group of bumbling fools justify their ugly behavior with dull
and uninspired dialogue and a series of mishaps that are too mild to save the
dying narrative. Nothing is funny and nothing is suspenseful. Nothing about
Foley’s film gives me confidence that he has abilities beyond getting family
and friends to participate in this backwash narrative from better films. It is
offensively dull; a film filled without a single enjoyable or believable moment
amongst the incestual cast.
The special
features on the Blu-ray include outtakes (incompetence provides many of these)
and a trailer. The high definition does little for the film, other than make
errors such as crew members walking through scenes more apparent. It is also
clear many of the shots are not quite in focus, though this is sadly not the
worst of the problems with Let’s Kill
Ward’s Wife.
Entertainment Value:
1.5/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 1/10
Historical
Significance: 0/10
Special Features: 1/10
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