| Ruby (Elizabeth Gillies) is smart and works hard, kind of. More accurately, she works at lots of jobs because she keeps getting fired because she can’t keep her mouth shut. Her current job is a paid internship at a high-brow magazine where she goes on a rant about journalism integrity and who the company should and should not partner with. She told herself to not say anything, but she couldn’t help herself, and now she’s out of a job. | | 2024
Directed by: Ellie Kanner
Screenplay by: Buffy Charlet
Starring: Elizabeth Gillies
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Ruby’s a fun character and the film starts quickly with a lot of funny lines. Eventually after all other options have failed, Ruby has to go work at Spread, the porno magazine. She hates it and she immediately makes it known that she thinks she’s better than it and everyone who works there. Her big mouth makes enemies with most of her co-workers, except the boss, Frank (Harvey Keitel). This time she’s ranting about how out-of-touch the pornography industry is and how they need a social media presence and to tap into the female market. Instead of firing her, Frank promotes her, and she’s going to create an app. Despite having no experience or knowledge of how to do it.
Here's the thing, Spread is very reminiscent of Minx, the short-lived, very good, based-on-a-true-story tv series from two years ago set in the 1970s. Spread seems to think it’s a revolutionary idea to market porn to women, when in reality that has already been happening for decades. On one hand, this is supposed to be a progressive, pro-sex, pro-gender equality movie, but on the other hand it’s taking its industry back in history, so the end result is a stale story about not really revolutionizing the porn industry.
The lead actress and character is good. She’s fun, funny, and has great responses to her many weird co-workers, some of whom are played by famous actors. In addition to Harvey Keitel, Teri Polo and Diedrich Bader also show up to make things funny and weird (but in reverse order). Diedrich Bader is Ruby’s father who gets way too excited when he finds out his daughter works for a porn magazine and keeps showing up at work uninvited, so he can meet all of his heroes. The actor has such a good presence that he manages to make that funnier than it is weird.
Spread looks and sounds exactly like a TV movie, because, well it is one. Presumably anybody watching Tubi originals is expecting that. Production value is low, but it’s also just set in an office so doesn’t need high production values. The story drags a lot since it is both stale and takes the expected route. Ruby has some good interactions with co-workers so it’s s still an amusing watch and there are actually laugh-out-loud moments; it is funny enough to keep watching even though the story suggests there’s no point to it.
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