Girl Walks into a Bar is a 2011 American multiple story line ensemble comedy film directed by Sebastian Guitterez.
A lot can happen in one night…
10 characters cross paths and intersect over the course of a summer night in Los Angeles. It begins when a dentist hires a detective posing as an assassin to knock off his unfaithful wife only with the plan to dupe the “killer” out of the payment. This triggers a chain of events which soon overlap a network of eccentric night hawks from pickpockets to exotic dancers, philosophical excons and wannabe gangsters, crazy bartenders and loopy hatcheck girls each of whom has come to their own crossroads.
A neon lit wilderness where nothing is what it seems, Girl Walks into a Bar offers a cornucopia of razor sharp dialogue and neo-noir scenes through lizard lounges, honkytonks, dive bars and one nudist ping pong club. Like a great joke the premise promises much and after this unpredictable journey delivers more than one punch line.
Review by Variety
"Anyone who has acquired a taste for writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez’s playfully naughty and archly stylized crazy quilts of colorful characters and interlocking storylines can savor “Girl Walks Into a Bar” as the cinematic equivalent of a light but tasty snack…this unevenly paced but amusing pic has the kicky, anything-goes vivacity of a collaborative project produced in a single, sustained burst of creative enthusiasm.
Set in a succession of 10 Los Angeles bars over a long evening, “Girl” charts the random connections between, among others, a resourceful ex-cop (Carlo Gugino, star of Gutierrez’s “Women in Trouble” and “Elektra Luxx”); a melancholy ex-con (Robert Forster); a criminally inclined bar owner (Danny DeVito); and the hostess (Rosario Dawson) of what likely is the only nude Ping-Pong club in Silver Lake. As usual, Gutierrez’s dialogue recalls the funny wordplay in early pics by Alan Rudolph and Hal Hartley, and his dance sequences suggest an unfulfilled longing to direct a full-blown musical. Performances are zesty — Gutierrez brings out the best in Gugino — and tech values are surprisingly polished."