Can You Ever Forgive Me?

This film takes an altogether different view of the imitation game. By embracing frauds and failures, it achieves greatness on the sly.

As for McCarthy, her performance is less of a revelation than a confirmation of her talents.

Israel is anti-social and aggressive but you do find yourself rooting for her.

The revelation of McCarthy's turn is that she's just allowed to be, without apology, without schmaltz.

It doesn't hammer anything home. There is no heavy-handed exposition, no back stories. The characters arrive as is.

It's a great New York movie. It's a great film about friendship. It's also a great cat movie (if that's your bag).

Melissa McCarthy turns in a great performance as the grouchy writer and Richard Grant is terrific as her gay sidekick.

McCarthy and Grant have really nice chemistry and that makes for some entertaining back-and-forths between two otherwise shady people.

Films about writers are hard to make. Films about real-life writers impersonating multiple celebrities in letters bring an element of some much-welcomed lunacy to a film that makes Can You Ever Forgive Me? more of a literary Catch Me If You Can.

This film is a bittersweet delight and McCarthy shines in a role that should be thoroughly unappealing but isn’t. In fact, she delivers a kind of queer, feminist anti-hero that I have not seen before.