The director, Gil Cates, does what he can to pep up this bizarre story without distracting directorial displays, but the screenplay doesn't give him much to work with.

It's not impossible to make very funny movies about serial killers. "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Kind Hearts and Coronets" are both successful. But this movie doesn't seem to know where it wants to go. It's an ineffective hash of comedy and horror and it gets nowhere.

As comedy it fails because there's nothing particularly funny about it, outside of one scene towards the opening, in which Ari Graynor interrupts a board meeting to tell some intimate and disgusting secrets about the chairman. It's a nicely caught moment.

But -- well, what is the story about, anyway? A greedy and noisy young blond marries the office nerd, Colin Hanks, for his money after he wins the lottery. It turns out that this nebbish has no idea how to handle this sudden flow of cash and, on top of that, is the notorious serial killer the police are hunting. There are three bodies buried in the back yard, in addition to those cadavers he's left on the spot. So what does Graynor do when she digs up the bodies? (There is no hint of cadaverine.) She drags them and buries them somewhere else, an act which, along with one or two other utterly inexplicable acts, leads to her conviction as the serial killer and after a year or so, Hanks visits her in prison for the first time. She heaps her calumny upon him. And then what? She quietly asks him to keep visiting her and smiles gently. The last scene is an appealingly artsy overhead shot, as the director's joints creak while he reaches for SOMETHING to serve as a climactic moment.

Ari Graynor is almost always loud and teetering on hysteria, which isn't funny. Colin Hanks looks like the guy in some TV commercial who tries to fix a home appliance and gets shocked.

What does it all mean? The mismatched love, the lottery, the serial murders? Your guess is as good as mine. It all reminds me of a stew I once made out of canned foods whose sell-by dates were rapidly approaching. I called it an "olla podrida." This movie turned out better than the stew. The movie is at least a "ragout chez mois."

Blonde girl Leslie buys a lottery ticket and forgets her driver's license at the convenient store. Ben Keller (Colin Hanks) is a bumbling accountant who's in love with the firm's secretary Lucy St. Martin (Ari Graynor). She quits after an affair with the boss goes sour. Ben has known Lucy since childhood but she couldn't care less until he wins the $36 million lottery. His mother Pauline (Ann-Margret) found the ticket and cashed it in. Detective Harold Waylon (Jeffrey Tambor) is investigating a series of missing blonde women.

This is a black comedy that doesn't quite get to being funny. The black part is all there. The comedy part tries to be there. Ari Graynor is trying so hard. Colin Hanks is more or less the straight man. He has the persona of a bunny rabbit with a butcher's knife. Director Gil Cates Jr. isn't able to pull it off. He's not a particularly good director or a guy who does comedy. This doesn't working.

If it weren't for the very bad reviews on here, I would probably make this a 6/10, but I think this movie is worth a watch...casually on Netflix or some other free form.

Did I love this movie? No. Not the best movie around, but I love Colin Hanks and the premise looked really interesting. It was rather slow moving at points, and as others mentioned, the characters can be annoying.

However, Lucy being a very annoying character was actually planned perfectly. At first I hated it, but once it played into her manipulating Ben, and how that dynamic just seemed incredibly realistic, I really felt what they were going for. It REALLY hit me when she witnessed the first murder though. You could see her character as this zany annoying girl who just manipulated into a marriage she didn't want just for some money, and then she walks into this nightmare and she realizes.

The battle between wanting to stay with a rich husband, and processing the murder is just a brilliant couple of scenes. She is zoned out, but slowly chooses to help her husband and try to live with it, but you can tell she isn't coping that well (who would!?). But every additional display of money is just edging her towards just dealing with it and enjoying a lavish lifestyle.

Also Colin Hanks was great as the serial killer, and the craziness with imagining Lucy all over was really well done. He also was believable in the way that he just snaps and kills and then kind of comes back to reality.