Chabert Watch: Slightly Single in LA (2013)

Ah, the "look at our galaxy of stars" rom-com poster.  Always a promising sign.

Watched:  12/12/2025

Format DVD

Viewing:  First

Director:  Christie Will Wolf

Editor's note:  we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography.  I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online (one way or another).  

Ugh.  

File this under "this movie was never aimed at me" but also "never write fiction that is a thinly veiled version of a story about yourself".

Christie Will Wolf (here listed as Christie Will) is the writer/ director/ producer of Slightly Single in LA (2013).  These days she's a prolific director and producer of Hallmark movies, and I've seen some of them in whole or part.  She also was the mastermind behind 2011's Holiday Heist, one of the hardest-to-watch movies viewed during ChabertQuest 2025.  

The movie is a rom-com/ would-be Sex in the City about the foibles of a group of women and their token gay friend (Jonathan Bennet).  The story follows around Chabert's character, Dale, who has had bad luck in love.  But what's played for comedy is merely comedy shaped but at no time made me so much as crack a smile.  The movie feels like it's about someone with terrible risk analysis and decision making skills.  But the movie is written, directed and produced by one person - who seems totally unaware that the characters are not just unrelatable, but deeply unsympathetic.  

This lead character sucks.  But she sucks the least of all of the characters, so... yay?

Is this Will's story?  It's the POV of someone working in the production office of terrible reality shows, something Will did for a few years.  And, it's about a person who lost both of her parents at a young age and went on to boarding school, both items which appear in Will's IMDB biography.  It's an odd tell.  And if you think the character will blame things on this later, yes.  But it also has almost no real impact and so it sent me digging.

Look, the reason you might want to think twice before placing yourself and your problems at the center of a movie - but under a different name - is that people believe they are judging fictional characters, not you and the absolutely dumb stuff you've done.  (Fun fact:  We were actually told this in film school - just because your friends find something funny does not mean anyone else will find it funny - ie: write what you know" does not mean "just write about yourself".)  If you do write about yourself, you little egomaniac, the audience may just find it dull, kind of dumb and occasionally reprehensible.  This movie mostly falls into the first two categories with only one or two instances of the third.

Or hero, Dale (Chabert), abandons - I think - New York to come to LA and has been having casual hook ups.  These seem to not be working for her anymore, and as female protagonists in these movies always find out, a guy with an accent is a slutty cad.  She complains to her friends, Blonde, Brunette (Jenna Dewan), Haylie Duff and Bennett.  

Blonde is a would-be-actress so we have to suffer through the trying-to-make it jokes recycled from elsewhere, right down to "oh, her big role in the new film is playing a dead body".  Brunette is technically "hotter" than Chabert and therefore not a good person.  Brunette is, as they say, a starfucker.  Duff's character wants to get married.  Bennett's trait is being gay.  None of the characters are... good.  

The movie tries to make fun of some aspects of the very LA-ness of characters, but the jokes don't land because the movie is so braindead itself.  You can't make fun of other people for being shallow and clueless when your own movie comes off this way.

It's mostly a collection of stuff you'll see elsewhere.  The "funny" sex scenes showing Chabert's bad luck that reads much more as "maybe the problem isn't the partner?"  And leads immediately to an out-of-the-box awkward sex scene where a guy tries something and the female lead isn't into it, and it's supposed to be funny, but...  it's just painful.  (This leads to the image on the poster above)

The movie has the requisite "let's go out in LA as young people" scenes, complete with our reluctant lead trying to get into a popular club.  It has the rules about who you know, blah blah blah that is supposed to be some world building, but make LA just sound like no one ever got out of high school.  It has the then-popular "outdoor yoga" sequences.  We get date sequences to show LA men are silly in silly ways, and it's all about climbing the showbiz ladder, which may be true, but I don't @#$%ing care - the lead agreed to a date in the first place.  What the movie wants to say is that pounding an endless line of himbos in LA is maybe not super fulfilling if you really want a life partner, and I am not one to judge, but, yeah... no shit.

Did I mention Chris Kattan is in this movie?  He is, just as he's in this same auteur's Holiday Heist.  He's supposed to be an executive who is engaged to Hailey Duff.  Duff plays the annoying person who believes in hitting all the right marks for finishing school and then getting married - as everyone watched in slow motion as a wedding is planned that no one thinks is a good idea.  That this will go poorly for Duff is never in question - we're just running out the clock on that one.  And it is the counterpoint offered by the movie to our lead's romantic foibles.  

And look - in better hands, all of this might be fine and even funny.  But...  here it's just trite and dull.

The boring nonsense is propelled into motion when Chabert's platonic pal, Zack, returns to LA now that he's won four grammy's (sp?).  He of course recognizes Chabert for the soulful person Christie Will Chabert is and is throwing himself at her.  The movie wants us to believe her character is blind to or doesn't want or... something?  Something something want something real, but he's real and that's scary and no?  But also yes.  

If this sounds exhausting, it absolutely is.  It is not a journey, it is someone who can't read a map stuck in a gas station parking lot afraid to ask anyone for directions.  I had absolutely no patience for the predicament that our lead found herself in which was entirely of her own making.  

Zack is a standard-issue cipher of a male lead in one of these movies.  His personality is "he likes Girl".  The movie makes no real argument for why this is true or why Dale is special in a movie littered with LA 20-somethings.  It's also hilarious that the movie decided the guy who pursues our hero is a rock star who we can assume has groupies, etc...  and will never be around.  Why couldn't the guy be a carpenter or accountant or haberdasher?  Because this is our auteur's fantasy, and that includes maybe landing a guy who sings crappy 2010's-era power rock.

At the end of the day it's a movie that's a long anecdote you would ask the people telling it "can you just skip to the end?  I'm not getting the point here."  And even then, you wouldn't really see the point.

Is it stupid?  Yes.  See above.

Is Chabert good?  Look, she's fine.  And I can see the attraction to wanting to be a lead in something like this.  If the movie has an issue, it's not her.  I am sure this seemed reasonable at the time, and was a lead role.