A great movie comedy is something of a miracle, a combination of circumstances, personnel, and timing that would seem impossible to replicate, even under the most ideal circumstances. (It’s why so many comedy sequels stink, but that’s for another time.) So first and foremost, the baffling thing about Chelsea Peretti’s “First Time Female Director” is that, once you set its title-embedded topicality aside, it’s basically a beat-for-beat remake of Christopher Guest’s “Waiting For Guffman.” Why risk the comparison—especially when you’ll come out looking so dire?
READ MORE: Tribeca 2023 Festival: 20 Films To Watch
Peretti stars as Sam, the in-house playwright for a Glendale community theater who is asked to take over directorial duties on her latest opus when the theater’s regular (male) director is exposed as a sex pest. At first, she’s resistant: “There’s gotta be someone better,” she insists, less out of modesty than self-preservation, until the offer is made more attractive by the theater manager (Andy Richter): “Of course, your rate would double.” “I accept!” she immediately replies.
She’s got a tough job on her hands to begin with because her play is bad, an overwrought, three-plus hour Southern Gothic melodrama called “Rain’s Comin’ In,” filled with screeching monologues and family funerals. But she’s also clueless in the rehearsal room, painfully personally awkward, and clueless in her communication with her actors. But most of what follows, plot-wise, is ‘Guffman’ replication: the small-town dreamer character types, the rehearsal failures, the cancellation of the big production, the “show must go on” rallying, and so on.
The most immediately striking issue with “First Time Female Director” is the filmmaking, which is frankly and unexpectedly amateurish. There’s a chintzy, flat look to the thing—much of it looks like an extended “Funny or Die” video—and she compresses and elongates scenes with frequent, inexplicable bursts of slow-motion (and fast-motion, like it’s a Keystone comedy), augmented by an aggressive, wacky-doodle score. It splashes an unmistakable veneer of flop sweat over the entire endeavor.
Of course, none of that would matter if we were laughing. But the picture is painfully, clumsily unfunny, broadly written and played, with each character squeezed within an inch of its thin conception. Unfortunately, that applies to and includes Peretti herself; she’s a genuinely gonzo performer and an undeniable talent, but the kind of outsiders and oddballs she plays so well tend to work best in small doses and supporting roles. Front and center, as the main character, Sam grinds on the nerves quickly and doesn’t really change or modify from one end of the film to the other. 
She also fills the film with cameos from her celebrity pals, and while a couple of them land a laugh or two, most just reduce the picture to a kind of alt-comedy “Cannonball Run.” The most successful character is likely Amy Poehler (also a producer), as Sam’s truly terrible therapist, who cancels sessions because “I had to do some last-minute shopping” and solicits wisdom along the lines of “Life is a non-stop party or you’re doing it wrong.” The ever-expanding boundaries of her inappropriateness is a good running gag, and there are other occasional bits of amusing business, like her seduction by Max Greenfield or a clever encounter with a female rideshare driver.
But the genuine laughs are few and far between, and the scattershot nature of the enterprise makes them isolated incidents rather than comic situations built and/or sustained. “First Time Female Director” is a tremendous disappointment because Peretti is such a gifted performer; it’s understandable to go in pulling for her (this viewer certainly did), but those layers of goodwill just peel away as scene after scene simply does not work. Too much of what she’s assembled is just half-hearted cringe comedy—much of it without the comedy half of the equation. [D+]
Follow along for all our 2023 Tribeca Film & Television Festival coverage.