Review: The Stand-In Is an Uneven Showbiz Lampoon Steadied by Drew Barrymore

Real movie star Drew Barrymore plays fake movie star Candy Black in The Stand In. Candy is known by her rabid fanbase as the reigning queen of the lowbrow comedy—namely, and as indicated by the highlight reel of her work that opens director Jamie Babbit’s latest, comedies that seem to consist mainly of the actress tripping and falling flat on her face in various settings before she spouts out her signature catchphrase: “Hit me where it hurts!” It’s a broad lampoon of the state of modern studio comedies, for sure, but it offers the perfect opportunity for the scion of one of Hollywood’s most notable acting families to interrogate her relationship with celebrity in highly self-aware fashion.

Candy is a drug-addled, foul-mouthed mess, and after a subsequent scene in which she erupts in a violent, cocaine-fueled tirade on the set of her latest film, her career is effectively canceled. Flash forward five years and she’s now living as a recluse in her decrepit Long Island mansion, facing a court-ordered stint in rehab and various lawsuits over her failure to pay her taxes. But despite these issues, Candy has already been starting her life anew, turning toward the more natural hobby of woodworking and tentatively starting an online romance with a handyman named Steve (Michael Zegen), bonding over a shared love of the authentic furniture and cultural practices of the Shakers—a humorous side obsession that the film continues to return to throughout. So instead of derailing her newfound pursuits, Candy contacts her former long-suffering stand-in, Paula (also Barrymore), to take her place in rehab.

Barrymore plays both the cynically vulgar Candy and the naïve wallflower Paula with equal aplomb. Once Paula, an aspiring actress, is quickly released due to good behavior, she talks Candy into keeping the impersonation scheme going for a full-scale talk-show apology tour, with the profits being split evenly between them, a ploy that proves wildly successful. But as Paula becomes blinded by fame, she aims to completely take over Candy’s life, going full-on Single White Female when she begins to surreptitiously date Steven.

Considering their drastically opposing demeanors, The Stand In’s switched-identity plot is initially dubious. But that’s exactly the point: Nobody cares that the new and improved Candy is radically different, so long as she apologizes and gets back to the business of being funny. When the real Candy is eventually evicted from her home by the now-egomaniacal Paula and confesses the rouse to her agent (T.J. Miller), he perfectly sums up the film’s blunt commentary: “Well, it doesn’t matter that she’s fake. This whole business is fake, you know?”

Would that such satirical clarity was more common or equally savage across the film’s running time. As directed by Babbit, whose comic edge has never quite regained the heights of her riotously hilarious debut, But I’m a Cheerleader, The Stand In too often makes room for bland sentimentality, creating an atonal mishmash that muddles the screenplay’s underlying ideas about fame’s predilection for devouring emotional or intellectual substance, whether for Candy/Paula or anyone else in her orbit. Indeed, the film’s choppy editing and story pacing, not to mention some outdated cameos, reflect the nature of a project that’s been tinkered with over time. Likewise, certain promising plot threads are confusingly cut off: At one point, Steven reveals that he’s hiding from his own past viral-video infamy, and even though the script initially seems to be setting it up as a logical conflict to Paula/Candy’s return to the spotlight, the idea never goes any farther than a pointlessly crude laugh.

During such moments, you can almost see the richer, more focused film trying to peek through, but Barrymore’s commitment to her role(s) is such that it all feels less patchy than it might otherwise have. It’s also admirable how she and Babbit seamlessly shift our sympathies from Paula to Candy as the roles reverse. And just when it appears that we’re headed for a traditional climax where Paula’s plot is exposed and everyone learns their lessons, The Stand In surprises again with an unusual finale that borders on the strangely unnerving, positing fame as a metaphorical prison that will entrap “Candy Black” forever. It gives the film an existential bent, driving home the bleak worldview of an appearance-obsessed cultural landscape where presentation overrules identity.