Rebel Wilson is funny. She kills it in Pitch Perfect, hosting award shows and on late-night talk shows.
Rebel Wilson is okay in Super Fun Night, her new show she created/writes/stars in.
The appeal of the show about three girlfriends who hang out every Friday night is the sassy Australian—who plays an American here—and that’s enough to drum up a lot of anticipation surrounding the show. Unfortunately, the show was plagued by some bad press early on. The actual pilot that was sent out to critics early won’t even be shown to audiences.
This premiere—“Anything For Love”—was supposed to be the second episode. There aren’t any problematic plot holes, but that really doesn’t matter here. Wilson stars as Kimmie, an awkward and accident-prone lawyer who should be a terrific character. Don’t get me wrong, she’s extremely lovable, but she needs to improve because as I said earlier: she has to carry this show.
Kimmie is vying for the attention of her boss Richard (Kevin Bishop), which lands her in the crosshairs of the ambitious Kendall (Kate Jenkinson). The result of this cattiness is that her work life gets mixed with her Super Fun Night which she spends with two other extremely socially awkward friends.
The three friends go to a piano bar to sing, and Richard joins them. There is a huge chunk of time where the dialogue should be hilarious and really make the episode, but it’s unfortunately extremely not funny. Then of course Kendall shows up right before the stage-frightened Kimmie is supposed to sing and crushes her song. Kimmie nervously steps on stage and…
Who had $5 on “faints immediately?”
Congratulations. You could have written this episode.
It’s a basic plot, but it does have its moments. They’re fleeting, but they’re there.
The early prediction is that the show will fail if it doesn’t change something. Super Fun Night does have something going for it though. Twitter is abuzz with people rooting for it to get better. Nowadays people write off a show immediately, but the rising star power of Rebel Wilson really has won over a lot of fans and critics alike, including me. Here’s hoping that something positive changes sooner rather than later.