I ended last week with a few posts about music in recent movies.

I like that it gave me the chance to jot down some thoughts about those films, in the absence of full-length reviews, so I’m going to keep it up this week.

I can’t remember the last time I disliked a movie as instantly as I did Frances Ha.

I’ve seen the film (directed by Noah Baumbach and written by Baumbauch and the film’s star, Greta Gerwig) on plenty of year-end top-ten lists, so I was prepared to like it. Comparisons to Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Annie Hall sure didn’t hurt.

But from the opening shot — which features, I kid you not, a woman playing a ukulele while her best friend dances on a New York sidewalk — I had to suppress a gag reflex.

This is the ultimate “quirky girl” movie, about a wannabe dancer (Gerwig) who bounces from place to place trying to find herself after a falling out with her best friend. Like the HBO show Girls, it purports to capture the experience of twenty-something urbanites, and for the sake of the country I can only hope it’s a wild exaggeration.

Watching Frances Ha, I remembered the hilarious SNL skit in which Tina Fey plays an Albanian woman named Blerta who joins the Girls cast. As the Lena Dunham stand-in whines about her problems, Blerta says “don’t worry, you are only 15.” Given the woman’s actual age, Blerta replies “24? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Greta Gerwig’s Frances is 27 but acts more like 12. At times I wondered if she was supposed to be mentally challenged.

In one scene, frequently cited in reviews as one of the film’s highlights, Frances runs, skips and dances down a New York street while David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ plays on the soundtrack. It’s a great song, and the black-and-white photography makes for a great image. But why the hell is a grown woman skipping down a city street? I wanted her to get hit by a truck.