Janet Planet (2023) review

Neurotic - and friendless - eleven-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) hates summer camp (she threatens to kill herself) so she returns home to stay with her single mother (and licensed acupuncturist) Janet (Julianne Nicholson), who's in a relationship with Wayne (Will Patton), but when Wayne leaves actress Regina (Sophie Okonedo) comes and lives with them and then Regina's ex-boyfriend Avi (Elias Koteas), a flighty theatre director (and possible cult leader), starts hanging around.  It begins as a rather standard mom-and-troubled-daughter movie but then it drifts off completely with its film school affectations (lots of close-ups of objects like Lacy's figurines, peculiar framing where heads and bodies are "cut off") and trite "philosophical musings."  Playwright Baker, in her feature debut, seems to think that dragging in new characters, having them deliver a few lines and then going away is a good idea, but the approach is hardly productive - likewise, if she's trying to poke fun at "hippie types" and their whimsical view of life, this needed a different tone altogether.  In reality, Lacy appears to need some counseling from professionals (she insists on sleeping with Janet every night), but the farthest Janet will go is grabbing antibiotics (which they both hate) for her from a drug store.  How about this for an alternative title: Phony Baloney.