‘Self Reliance’ Review: Jake Johnson Gets Hunted on Hulu

‘Self Reliance” is not quite a shaggy-dog story, but it is shaggy, unlikely and improbably likable. It might lick your hand if it were a labradoodle, though it does have an uneasy question: Would a 40-odd-year-old guy allow himself to become the prey of hunters—not for the $1 million payoff, exactly, but out of boredom? One ponders, not bored.

That question—a major plausibility device for writer, director and actor Jake Johnson (“New Girl”)—distracts from the otherwise lunatic premise of the film and the story of Tommy Walcott (Mr. Johnson). As Ralph Waldo Emerson might have said in an essay of the same name (and did), a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds; Tommy seems to feel his brain shrinking along with his life. He has moved beyond routine; his hobgoblins include his old girlfriend (Natalie Morales), who is already married with a baby, and Tommy still can’t bring himself to ask her why she broke it off with him. When he’s approached on the street by Andy Samberg—yes, Andy Samberg—he’s taken aback, but he gets in the star’s limo. It can get stranger than this, and will, but Mr. Johnson the filmmaker has established a foundation for weird things to occur. The viewer will either go with the flow or ask the limo to pull over.