'Welcome to Me,' review by English Major and PopMatters Intern Judy Hur

“It’s a new era, an $86 million Alice,” Alice Klieg (Kirsten Wiig) tells her therapist (Tim Gunn). She’s just won the lottery, and nothing is going to stop her from achieving her dreams of becoming the next Oprah. Through her self-obsession, Welcome to Me considers a broader, and unsettling, culture of narcissism, extending beyond the desire to be a TV celebrity. In Alice’s show, “Welcome to Me by Alice Klieg,” she quite literally turns her life into a show.

She’s not Rupert Pupkin, but Alice is living with a borderline personality disorder, a plot point that may or may not let the rest of us off the hook. Her small apartment is filled with swan trinkets, VHS tapes, and piles of lottery tickets. She’s alone and self-absorbed, and off her medication. Her favorite thing to do is watch Oprah, sitting in front of the television reciting a taped recording of the show word for word.

Read more of Judy Hur's review here