Pun Salad

This movie earned a mediocre score from the IMDB raters, and the critics hated it (12% at Rotten Tomatoes). And it was a minor bomb at the box office earlier this year. (Number 99 on this list of the 200 "Worst Wide Openings" of the past twenty years). But I found it to be watchable and compelling. Go figure.

Amanda Seyfried plays Jill, a troubled young lady from Portland Oregon who was once abducted by a psycho killer. She escaped, against all odds.

Well, at least that's what she thinks happened. The cops were unable to find any evidence of the abduction; they viewed Jill as a insane hoaxer, and she spent a stint in the funny farm.

But now Jill is out, on her meds, holding down a steady job as a night-shift waitress, living in a cozy house with her sister, Sharon. But when she returns home one morning, Sharon's gone. Jill knows that her abductor has returned! But the cops never believed her, and they don't believe her now. So Jill takes matters into her own hands.

Jill encounters plenty of red herrings and oddball characters in her odyssey. And the movie (skillfully, I thought) notes that Jill really is a huge liar (either impulsive or compulsive, it's not clear). The truth eventually comes out, though.