"Trust Me" is a black comedy that proceeds as if it is the first film to ever use its plot — if a dead artist's paintings increase in value why not kill the artist and get rich? But since this idea has been used before, the title becomes an immediate irony.
"Trust Me" is very confident and very hip, but it's also far too fragmented to get into focus. The narrative drifts fairly interestingly but rather aimlessly, and the jokes tend to sag.
Rocker Adam Ant gets top billing as a sleazy art gallery owner whose business is failing. He needs a hot artist and seems to have luck on his side when one shows up in the form of mild-mannered messenger David Packer, who paints as a form of personal therapy.
As it happens, Ant's right-hand-woman Talia Balsam went to high school with Packer and they genuinely hit it off. The trouble is Packer doesn't want to sell his work. He paints to soothe his tortured soul, having suffered a mental breakdown sometime back and is happy with anonymity and life in his rat-infested loft over a Chinese funeral parlor.
Ant, however, has big plans for Packer's goofy paintings, which consist of cherubs a la Caravaggio who float among the deep-blue skies and wispy-white clouds, occasionally holding a volleyball. (Packer has a giant mobile hanging from the ceiling with baby dolls on strings, which he uses as models, one of the film's better visual gags.)
Ant crassly labels the paintings the "Dead Babies" series, and when an art critic sees them stacked against the warehouse wall upside-down and loves them, Ant hangs them in his gallery upside-down.
But Packer hasn't given permission for the show and has no interest in making money or becoming a celebrity. In fact, Ant has stolen the works from Packer's loft.
Since Packer is becoming so troublesome, Ant decides the best way to deal with him is murder. Of course, by this time Balsam is falling in love with Packer and won't go along with the plan. But will she be too late?
One of the main problems with "Trust Me" is that the characters' motivations are so muddled it's hard to understand their actions. Even zany black comedy needs some kind of underlying logic, whether in or out of step with the real world. And co-writer/director Bobby Houston never quite gets the film out of its early lethargy.
Worse, however, are some of the jokes from minor subplots, in particular scenes with Packer's mother, played by veteran comic actress Joyce Van Patten. An overbearing alcoholic, she thinks her son is gay and the moments where her illusions are seemingly confirmed feel forced.
On the whole, a disappointment, though there are some enjoyable elements at work here and Houston's visual look — especially for such a low-budget film — is quite good.
"Trust Me" is rated a fairly soft R for violence, profanity, sex and nudity — there's not a lot of any of those elements.