Ask Me Anything (2014)

In "Ask Me Anything," Britt Robertson plays Katie, a smart but aimless recent high school grad taking a year off class before starting college in hopes of finding her passion. A guidance counselor suggests she start a blog to keep her verbal skills sharp, so Katie comes up with one and changes her name to hide her identity and avoid questions from nosy parents.

  

And while it doesn’t stretch her verbal skills the way it does other parts of her body, the blog becomes quite popular thanks to Katie’s explicit content, which turns out to be a catalogue of her mostly inappropriate sexual conquests, some with older men—one is a film school professor (Justin Long) who shows her foreign films before sleeping with her; another is a seemingly happily married father (Christian Slater) with a new baby whose wife hired Katie to be nanny.

The other adults in Katie’s life include a frazzled mom (Molly Hagan), whose desperate attempts to steer her daughter in the right direction are seen as meddling; a well-meaning but thankless soon-to-be stepfather; an alcoholic dad (Robert Patrick) with deep, dark secrets that might feature child molestation; and even a kindly old bookstore owner (Martin Sheen) with a checkered past who gives Katie a job.

As Katie’s voiceover narration frequently hovers over the story, “Ask Me Anything” unfolds as though lifted directly from her laptop screen. In this sense, the movie—written and directed by Allison Burnett and based on his own novel, Undiscovered Gyrl (also the name of Katie’s blog)—functions as an intriguing social commentary about the lives of contemporary millennials playing out to a captive audience in cyberspace.

That kind of popularity, even if only from a nameless gaggle of anonymous fans, is seductive. But Katie’s not just uploading funny cat videos or writing about the latest fashion trends, and her messy life is carelessly careening towards misery and self-destruction. The movie works as a cautionary coming of age tale, although the surprise revelation at the end—sounding like the beginning of an episode of Dateline Mystery—comes across as clumsy and confused.

The film features a great performance from Britt Robertson. The expressive young actress, on camera nearly every moment, is a commanding screen presence capable of being smart and sarcastic, feisty and vulnerable. In “Ask Me Anything,” she’s remarkably able to create a character that remains believable and fascinating without ever being very likable. It’s an outstanding, revelatory performance. (Her latest role, unseen by me, is in the George Clooney-led Disney movie “Tomorrowland,” now in theaters.)

“Ask Me Anything” was fittingly released last December to video-on-demand, its target demographic of online viewers. It’s currently playing over the Netflix streaming platform and is worth a look.