Breaking News in Yuba County isn’t in on the joke, it is the joke

Despite trying to emulate a masterpiece like Fargo, this new, star-studded movie is more like a five-day old compost pile that’s been left in the sun.

You can’t argue that Breaking News in Yuba County didn’t aim high.

It definitely had ambitions to be a quirky crime comedy set in a smallish town with multiple storylines and a cast of characters each stranger and more incompetent than the next.

Essentially, it was trying to be Fargo. But ambition is where that comparison ends.

Because Breaking News in Yuba County is limp, not remotely funny and utter nonsense – and not in a wild, absurdist way. It’s nonsense in the traditional way of it being rank.

Again, it’s not for lack of trying on the part of many, many people with its enormous ensemble cast led by the amazing Allison Janney.

Janney’s support crew is bafflingly large and impressive. In fact, if you hadn’t studied the IMDb page before going in, your internal monologue for the first 30 minutes goes something like this.

“Oh, damn, that’s Mila Kunis! And Matthew Modine! Whoa, that’s Jimmi Simpson. In a scene with Ellen Barkin – and Wanda Sykes! Juliette Lewis, is that you under the wig? Yep, it is. Ah, and now Awkwafina and Clifton Collins Jr are threatening Chris Lowell!”

Of course, not long after, once the whiff really sets in, it becomes more of a case of, “Oh, no, Regina Hall, they got you too. What? Samira Wiley! Run, run away from this steaming pile of a movie!”. Wiley is actually running in her first scene, but not onto another production that actually deserves her talent.

Fargo it ain’t.

RELATED: Emma Stone on becoming Cruella de Vil

Directed by Tate Taylor and written by Amanda Idoko with Jake Gyllenhaal and Franklin Leonard among its producers, there was obviously something about Breaking News in Yuba County that snared all these great thesps – some gem on the page that became distorted in the journey to screen.

Because the finished movie is a tonal mess in which its various story strands become a case of diminishing returns as each lose whatever it is that makes it interesting in the first place as everything mushes together like five-day old compost left out in the sun.

Janney plays a woman named Sue Buttons, downtrodden doormat who can’t even rustle up the courage to demand that the cake she ordered for her own birthday be fixed of its spelling mistake.

Awkwafina is making new friends, obviously.

Jimmi Simpson, Ellen Barkin and Wanda Sykes are among the star-studded cast.

RELATED: What to watch on streaming in June

Hoping her husband Karl (Modine) or her half-sister Nancy (Kunis) might even remember her birthday was folly. What Sue doesn’t know is that Karl is mixed up in some dirty dealings with a couple of gangsters (Awkwafina and Collins Jr) and a mistress (Bridget Everett).

Meanwhile, Karl’s brother Petey (Simpson) is trying to stay out of the seedy side of life with his job at a discount furniture store run by Rita (Sykes), but the latter is keen for some shady adventure.

Elsewhere in Yuba County, the case of a missing 13-year-old girl is all anyone’s talking about, especially talk show host Gloria Michaels (Lewis).

When a series of unlikely events unfold and Sue finds herself in a position to cry wolf for a little bit of the attention she so desperately craves, she does.

In an increasingly preposterous story, Sue struggles to keep the facade up while basking in the mild media fame, as Detective Cam Harris (Hall), sporting the most mullety of mullets outside of a Billy Ray Cyrus lookalike contest, starts to doubt Sue’s story.

How did Regina Hall get mixed up in this mess?

That almost every character seems to always make the wrong decision is straight out of the Fargo handbook, especially when their various situations become more precarious.

But Breaking News in Yuba County doesn’t have the sophistication or discipline to know the line between farce and foolishness – it always dials it up to an 11 when some scenes of moderation would help it balance.

In trying to be clever and winky, it’s wildly, unnecessarily convoluted and sucks out any momentum and humour it might’ve been building.

Breaking News in Yuba County might think it’s in on the joke but actually, it is the joke.

Rating: 2/5

Breaking News in Yuba County is in cinemas now

Share your movies and TV obsessions | @wenleima