BEFORE: Paula Pell carries over from "Other People", but here come four films in a row with Maya Rudolph, two live-action and then two animated. Once I get back on cartoons I'll stay on them for about a week, after that there should only be 10 or 11 slots left in May. At some point this month I hope to get some news about NYC opening up again and maybe going back to work, but right now there's still no news so I'm still in a holding pattern. I know other parts of the country are opening up restaurants and beaches and other public places, but it remains to be seen if that's premature. I guess we'll find out whether those states choose to ignore their death tolls or hide their statistics, or get shamed back into closing everything down again.
But let's finish off the Mother's Day chain (at least one of the characters in this film is probably a mom, right?) with a virtual trip to Napa Valley, in the hopes that tourism will also be back and become a thing again. Even after planes fly again and theme parks, casinos and wineries open again, the next question will become whether Americans will WANT to travel again, and will they feel safe doing so? Nobody's really sure.
THE PLOT: During a vacation to Napa Valley, a group of long-time friends reunite and revisit past choices.
AFTER: First question, was this pitched as "Bridesmaids" meets a female "Sideways" - is this therefore "Brideways" or "Sidemaids"? We've seen the disastrous trip through Napa Valley thing before, we've seen the "trying to pick up the hot Asian-American sommelier" thing, too. So it feels like they just put the same number of women from the "Bridesmaids" story in a similar situation to the "Sideways" trip and hoped the thing might write itself. I was just left wishing it were funnier - was Tina Fey not available for a larger role? She's always good, but they just didn't give her much to do here, as the owner/caretaker of the house.
All of the main characters are neurotic or messed-up in some way - remember, it's still National Mental Health Month. One is hyper-organized and super-controlling to compensate for the fact that she recently lost her job and hasn't told anyone, another is a workaholic with a successful pie franchise who thinks maybe her friends don't want to include her in their outings, another doesn't want to face the fact that she's in a failing marriage to a boring guy, yet another is concerned with medical test results that she's waiting on. Wait, that's only four and there are six main characters. The fifth is an out lesbian who's constantly on the prowl (umm, if it's creepy for a guy, it's also creepy for a gal, welcome to the new equality) and the sixth is just "generally miserable" about her life, I guess that's where the writers ran out of ideas).
It seems Netflix is where the aging SNL comedians go to pitch their projects now, if they don't seem all that commercially viable. Adam Sandler was once the hottest comedy actor out there, but when he started to see the box office for his films dwindling, he signed a deal with Netflix, and suddenly it didn't matter how much his films did or didn't make in a theatrical release, he got paid either way. So, umm, what's his motivation to make better movies, then? It's kind of like when your favorite band signs a multi-album deal with one of the bigger record labels, you just know their first album released under that deal is going to suck, because they've started to coast. And then the albums will get even worse from there - I watched this happen to ZZ Top after their "Afterburner" album, which was the last good one they ever made. Sandler's deal with Netflix included "Sandy Wexler", "The Do-Over", "The Ridiculous 6" and "Murder Mystery". The only solid work he's done since then was outside of that deal, in "Uncut Gems" and the "Hotel Transylvania" movies.
Actually, the Sandler thing is a good point of reference, because for a while there he was making sure that his films all took place in Hawaii or some place tropical, just so he could get his whole family a free vacation on the film distributor's dime. Right? "50 First Dates", "Just Go With It", were there others? I suppose it's a legal way to get your family a vacation, if you cast most of them in the movie, too. But I guess maybe they got bored with Hawaii because they shot part of "Blended" in South Africa and "Murder Mystery" in Italy. So you have to wonder if the stars family's next choice of preference is also dictating the settings for his next movie. Or maybe it's kickbacks or freebies from that state or country's department of tourism - also quite legal, but a little more shady.
It sounds more like "Wine Country" was based on a true story, surrounding Rachel Dratch's real 50th birthday, when she did go with these friends to Napa Valley, and they did hire a chef to cook them paella. That makes a bit more sense than "the paella cook comes with the house" and "it apparently takes 17 hours to make paella".
The ending is very stupid, they make a big deal about being at the top of a hill when one of the women is in need of medical attention. They see someone in a car at the bottom of the hill, so one woman volunteers to fall/roll down the hill, but she's unable to recover in time to get the attention of the people in the car. So one by one, they all convince themselves that falling or rolling down this hill is somehow necessary, only it's not. They HAVE a golf cart, which got them to the top of the hill, so therefore logically, it should be able to get them OFF the hill as well. "Hey, we're not getting cell phone reception" is not a good enough reason for each character to make a big deal of jumping off this hill in turn, and risking further injury - it's not a logical progression. Somehow this is supposed to be a symbolic re-awakening for each woman as she jumps off, into the unknown, but I'm not buying it. Why not drive in the golf cart for 2 minutes to a place with better cell phone reception, and then call for an ambulance? This is supposed to be a group of intelligent, mature women and they default to panic mode as soon as there's an emergency situation that they haven't encountered before.
The whole thing with the psychic/tarot card reader felt very forced - that was a cheap bit of foreshadowing, using a psychic. Most films would probably find a more subtle way to hint at what's coming later in the film, rather than just have a tarot card reader blurt it out. There's also the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning that these things only come true BECAUSE this character predicted them, and the prediction itself causes the other characters to do certain things, or notice other things that they otherwise wouldn't have. Getting this group of female friends together is going to bring everything out in the open, all the little personality conflicts or long-buried disagreements, but that still doesn't mean the process has to be so ineptly telegraphed.
I didn't know who Brené Brown was, apparently she's an author and did some meaningful TED talks at some point. Maybe I'm just not in the target audience for this movie, and professional yet emotionally vulnerable women would know more about who she is and what she's about. Or maybe she's just the biggest celebrity author they could get to do a cameo...sorry, I'm feeling very cynical today, but I think watching this movie made me that way, to a large extent.
The best two scenes were probably the birthday party itself - I could finally believe that THIS group of women DID work together in a Chicago pizza place so many years ago - and the art gallery scene, during which the Gen X women take down the group of Millennials for being so privileged, not ever watching television on TV, over-sharing hate on the internet and just generally being horrible people. I wish this scene could have gone even further, and not just taken today's kids to task for something stupid, like liking "The Nanny". Especially when their "OK Boomer" rant just causes all the hipsters to grab their phones and record it, thus proving the argument's point. Umm, I think? More scenes like this, please.
Also starring Amy Poehler (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Rachel Dratch (last seen in "The Week of"), Ana Gasteyer (last seen in "What Women Want"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Emily Spivey, Cherry Jones (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Maya Erskine, Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Dreamland"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Jay Larson, Craig Cackowski, Liz Cackowski (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Greg Poehler, Sunita Mani (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Brené Brown, Kate Comer (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), RJ Walker, Jason Greene.
RATING: 4 out of 10 organic sediments left in the glass
No comments:
Post a Comment