‘Millie Lies Low’ Review: An Unexpected Staycation

In “Millie Lies Low,” Millie (Ana Scotney), an aspiring architect from Wellington, New Zealand, experiences a panic assault moments earlier than her aircraft takes off. After disembarking, she realizes that it’s going to now be inconceivable for her to afford to journey to New York City, the place she was about to take an internship at a high agency.

No matter: Millie is already a seasoned fraud — she acquired her scholarship by stealing concepts from her finest buddy, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen) — and so she makes use of expertise to take care of the phantasm that she crossed the worldwide date line as deliberate. She locations a video name to mates (forgetting to account for the flight lengths or the time distinction) and fakes footage of herself standing in Times Square and close to the Empire State Building.

Wellington, with its steep hillsides, non-public cable vehicles and ringed pure harbor, couldn’t move for New York in the event you photographed it the other way up and backward, and Millie’s act turns into much more of a stretch as soon as she stakes out a spot by her mom’s house to poach the Wi-Fi and pitches a tent. In her first characteristic, the director, Michelle Savill, presents Millie’s motivations as self-destructive however comprehensible. Scotney, by no means fairly mugging for sympathy, performs her effectively.

But provided that Millie begins as an architectural plagiarist and strikes into buffoonery because the movie proceeds (stealing her boyfriend’s passport, kidnapping her personal pet bunny), the screenplay’s efforts to redeem her face a tough uphill climb. In the tip, the film far too simply waves away the potential interpersonal harm Millie has triggered.

Millie Lies Low
Not Rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters.