Bad Actress

In Robert Lee King's black comedy, a soap star goes to desperate lengths to hang on to her extravagant Hollywood lifestyle. Alyssa Rampart-Pillage (Beth Broderick), formerly appearing on HMO Nurse, now makes commercials with her husband, Bernie (Chris Mulkey), an appliance store magnate. The couple have three resentful children, one of whom, Topanga (Keri Lynn Pratt), is trying to be an activist, even if that means protesting her own father's business. However, in the first chapter, “Motive,” Topanga dies from a fall before she can make amends (the other chapters are titled “Means” and “Opportunity”), which leaves the bulimic Rebecca (Whitney Able) and sex-obsessed Russell (Ryan Hansen). After Topanga's death, Bernie undergoes a spiritual awakening and, to Alyssa's chagrin, turns to a New Age religion, scales back his business, and cuts his family out of his will. Alyssa promptly turns to Bernie's cousin, Morris (Vincent Ventresca), with whom she's been having an affair, to make her hubby pay. Before long, Bernie winds up dead, and the LAPD is sniffing around, spurring the kids to try to hunt down evidence to implicate Alyssa. Along the way, another person turns up dead, while Alyssa ensnares a fortune teller (Nathan Lee Graham) and an actor (Corbin Bernsen as himself) in her mess. King actually keeps this fairly preposterous narrative nicely humming along, and while it's rarely laugh-out-loud funny, Bad Actress is always engaging. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)