Halley Feiffer, “daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning satirist Jules Feiffer,” had a brief spurt of fame with a part in “The Squid and Whale” in 2005. Later, she lured her brother into an ill-defined movie project with her. The director was to be her brother’s boyfriend Michael Urie, a k a “that gay guy from ‘Ugly Betty.’ ”
That — with the possible exception of the first sentence — is not the true story of Halley Feiffer’s life. It’s a reasonably concise summary of about one-fifth of the plot of Halley Feiffer’s indie comedy, in which the actors play exaggerated versions of themselves. While the movie is (really) directed by Urie, Feiffer doesn’t actually have a brother — that part is played by her co-screenwriter Ryan Spahn.
I trust that the movie’s “Halley” bears limited, if any, resemblance to the real-life Feiffer. “Halley” is monstrous: dimwitted, narcissistic, alcoholic, willing to unplug her father’s oxygen machine for one scene in her movie. For all the caricature, bits of “Halley” will be recognizable to anyone who’s spent enough time with frustrated indie actors. And there are some laughs, though most of them are in-jokes — way, way in-jokes, about Ralph Macchio, about Noah Baumbach, about Natasha Lyonne. (Lyonne, however, almost walks off with the movie in a hard-bitten cameo as “Halley’s” AA sponsor, “Natasha Lyonne.”)
The screenplay never meshes its ideas into one satirical story or even a series of sketches with individually coherent points. A little meta goes a long, long way.