Carrie Pilby is a 19-year-old child prodigy living alone in New York City. She is always the smartest person in the room but too unhappy to enjoy it. With difficulty interacting, she has trouble dating and making friends, but she always has something to say. And while she can analyze everything, regardless of the situation, she has more difficulty understanding herself.
Carrie asks her therapist, Dr. Petrov, in a weekly session why so much emphasis is placed on happiness. "There are some brilliant, unhappy people." But the therapist, a longtime friend of Carrie's absent and widowed father, is very aware of how unique she is. Originally from London, Carrie has lived in NYC since she was 12, when her mother passed and now by herself in Manhattan. She skipped three grades, graduating from Harvard University at 18. A year later, she works for a law firm as a proofreader at her dad's insistence, but doesn't really need the job.
Carrie's clearly lonely and feels odd, despite outward appearances. She has spent the past year largely hiding in her apartment and seeing Dr. Petrov. So, he makes her a to-do list to help her emerge from her self-isolation, "Give humanity a chance" and find joy in her life: Get a job. Make a friend. Get a pet. Go on a date. Do something you enjoyed as a child.
Her adventures include a blind date with an engaged guy, friendship with an extroverted but kind co-worker and "the guy next door", whom she meets while he's playing a didgeridoo in the alley behind their apartment building. They eventually get to know each other through a walk-and-talk around the city.
There are occasional flashbacks to Carrie's abusive relationship with her English professor when she was just 16. These serious scenes help explain her contradictions: intellectual wisdom beyond her years combined with a teen's emotional immaturity.
As Carrie starts to fulfill the list, her views on sex, romance and the world begin to change as well as how she sees relationships and humanity.
The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9, 2016.[8] In November 2016, The Orchard acquired US distribution rights to the film.[9] The film was given limited release on March 31, 2017, in six theaters, and then became available through video on demand on April 4, 2017.[10] The film was the most-watched iTunes film in the independent films category for the first three weeks of its release, then held third place during the fourth week.[11]
Reception
On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 63% based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10, and a Critics Consensus that states, "Carrie Pilby is rough around the edges but very endearing as Bel Powley delivers a compelling performance that's often enough to push past contrived notions."[12] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100 based on reviews from 14 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[13]
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