Review of Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) by Compi24 — 11 Dec 2018

After seeing her in both "Life Of The Party" and "The Happytime Murders" -- two of the worst movies of the year, in my opinion -- I didn't exactly have a whole lot of hope for this more dramatically inclined offering from Melissa McCarthy and director Marielle Heller.

But I suppose the third time's the proverbial charm with "Can You Ever Forgive Me?" which not only shakes out to be McCarthy's best movie in quite some time, but the one containing the finest performance work I've seen from her as an actor.

McCarthy's Lee Israel is caustically sardonic, brilliantly sad, and devilishly complicated in a moral sense. The entirety of this film's success hinges on McCarthy's performance, and she doesn't let the audience down.

Though, that's not to say supporting actor Richard E. Grant and Heller herself don't do their fair share of heavy lifting in the appropriate places. At the end of the day, I was pretty shocked that this was as good as it ended up being.

And McCarthy is largely the reason why. We're good, Melissa. We're good.