Only now does it occur to me... could MR. WRONG, a screwball anti-romantic comedy and notorious box office bomb starring Ellen DeGeneres in her only live-action-feature leading role (to date), directed by longtime John Carpenter crony Nick Castle, and co-written by sci-fi/horror legend Richard Matheson's son Chris and THE MORNING SHOW's showrunner Kerry Ehrin... be as bad as they say?
The answer: sort of!
This, a project of such aforementioned and bizarre pedigree, is ultimately a delivery system for a series of wacky situations and horrified expressions in the vein of Jerry Lewis (with a messy pixie cut).
It begins with a Saul Bass-inspired credits sequence
and ends with a gunfight in Mexico and a ride into the sunset.
In between, a number of events take place.
Ellen's character Martha is a television producer for a local San Diego morning show

starring Robert Goulet (of Broadway and BEETLEJUICE fame),
which seems to weirdly prefigure Ellen's own rise and fall as a daytime TV star as well as co-writer Kerry Ehrin's own involvement with Apple TV's THE MORNING SHOW.
Ellen's character, who is styled exactly as she appears on her own popular sitcom ELLEN (1994-1998), is struggling to find "Mr. Right." 
And that there is a reference to BILL AND TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE inserted by co-writer Chris Matheson, who also wrote all three BILL AND TED films.
She is aided in her quest by a Best Friend™(the likeable Ellen Cleghorne, of ARMAGEDDON and COYOTE UGLY)
who, because it was the 1990s, is contractually obligated to eat Lite yogurt throughout and provide generic encouragement.
Despite her own assistant (John Livingstone, of THE NET and EDTV) clearly being the screenplay's idea of her "perfect match hiding in plain sight," 

Here he is, asking her out to go see Richard Burton in BLUEBEARD (1972), an ignominious film I have reviewed on this very site.
Ellen still goes on the prowl and has an accidental meet-cute with Bill Pullman (who would soon wipe his involvement with this project from the cultural memory with the near-immediate one-two punch of INDEPENDENCE DAY and LOST HIGHWAY).
Pullman is depicted as a suave, cowboy-poet who's the heir to an enormous fortune. He seems perfect, at least until she discovers that, wait... he's... Mr. Wrong!
The warning signs are not subtle, and the comedy is played as broad as a barn door. There are more understated Pepé le Pew-centric episodes of THE LOONEY TUNES. First, he takes her to a convenience store to shoplift Blatz beers, crushing the empties on his forehead and flinging them from his convertible at bystanders.
I fail to understand how this is a red flag tho
Next, he love-bombs her with a bounty of unwanted gifts and comes to her window in the night dressed, inexplicably, as a clown on stilts.
This is probably the closest the film comes to overtly referencing HALLOWEEN. As I'm sure you all know, MR. WRONG's director (Nick Castle) played behind-the-mask Michael Myers in 1978's HALLOWEEN. He was also the co-writer of Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
Just when she thinks it can't get any worse, Ellen is also stalked by Pullman's ex Inga––a zany character played by two-time Oscar nominee Joan Cusack.
She probably gets about ten minutes of screentime, but she acquits herself with trashy élan.
This leads Ellen to hire a private eye (fellow Oscar nominee Dean Stockwell of BLUE VELVET, QUANTUM LEAP, and DUNE fame) who uncovers that Inga was involved in a plot to assassinate Stevie Nicks
which feels like a bizarrely specific detail for this screenplay to concoct. Dean Stockwell also, mostly acquits himself. He, Cusack, and Ellen Cleghorne might be the only ones who do.
Yep, this thing is a slapstick mess. It struggles with tone, and there's zero chemistry between the leads: romantic, comedic, or otherwise. Castle does a slick enough job assembling the picture (there are a few striking Hitchcock-inspired visuals and transitions), but the entire film feels like studio execs were trying force an Ellen-sized peg into a Jim Carrey-shaped hole.
Fourteen months after the release of MR. WRONG, Ellen would go on to give her iconic "Yep, I'm gay" interview to TIME magazine. One can imagine that the ham-handed attempts to mold her into a blandly heteronormative studio asset played some role in this decision.








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