BEFORE: Well, November was only 15 films long, and here's the format breakdown:
6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Disturbia, The Lost City, Here Today, The Good German, Hit and Run, The Turkey Bowl
2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): The Matrix Resurrections, Kajillionaire
5 watched on Netflix: The Unforgivable. The Guilty, The Starling, Don't Look Up, Friendsgiving
1 watched on Hulu: The Bob's Burgers Movie
1 watched on a random site: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
15 TOTAL
We returned from Thanksgiving five days ago, after an eight-hour drive back from Massachusetts that has seriously made me re-consider Christmas plans - I don't want to get stuck in holiday traffic for that long again. The last two years we just stayed at home on Christmas and made lasagna, can't we just do that again? Last year we shopped at an outlet mall like three days after Christmas, and that was a fantastic thing to do, why can't we do that again, too? We can mail gifts that arrive late, that's acceptable, or we can order things on Amazon and they can arrive after New Year's, can that be OK like it was last time? Look, I'm behind the 8-ball here, it's December 1 and I haven't even had a chance to THINK about making a Christmas music mix this year. Usually by now I'm tweeting out YouTube song links, once per day as a sort of musical Advent calendar, if I want to do that again I've got to pick songs this weekend - I've just been way too busy at the theater.
Fortune Feimster carries over from "Friendsgiving", and this final little stretch of 10 films in December is a very mixed-up bunch, there are some sort-of new comedies and some classic British "arty" films, plus one documentary that didn't fit into my summer Rock & Doc Block, but I assure you that this plan ends with a Christmas story or two. My excuse is that by now I've watched 96% of my films for the year, and all the various choices I've made along the way have compounded to result in THIS BATCH of films being the best way to get to a Christmas theme, I've sort of painted myself into a corner, but I left just one tiny little way for me to get out of it. Without getting into set theory and probabilities and trying to decide who more deserves to make the year-end wrap-up list, Michael Caine or Richard E. Grant, let's just say that this is the way, and once I found the way, I didn't need to look for another way. OK?
THE PLOT: Friends Barb and Star embark on the adventure of a lifetime when they decide to leave their small Midwestern town for the first time ever.
AFTER: Well, this sure was a weird one - I know, I probably say that a lot. It's been a weird year for movies, and that was before watching the movie about Weird Al. I'll probably have a lot to say about weird movies in my year end wrap-up, since I watched everything from "Willy's Wonderland" to "Kajillionaire" during this lap around the sun, and eventually I'll have to account for everything from a Bruce Willis marathon to "House of Gucci". And for every "Encanto" there was also a "Vivo", for every "The Mitchells vs. the Machines" there was a "Ron's Gone Wrong". There's probably some form of balance there, in the end.
But let's put "Barb & Star" up against that Weird Al Yankovic movie, just for another second. The Weird Al "biopic" was never meant to be taken seriously, it worked as a parody of other biopics, it didn't even TRY to get the facts right about Al's life, and that's both hilariously ironic and also ironically hilarious. By contrast, "Barb & Star" takes itself WAY too seriously, or it doesn't go far enough into comedy, or perhaps it just doesn't know what it wants to be. It's a buddy comedy, a travel comedy, a fish-out-of-water story with two Midwestern middle-age women going to Florida and being very clueless about everything. It's a character piece, maybe it feels a bit like a story about two characters who were pitched as an SNL skit, only the skit goes nowhere in the end.
But then the film throws in another plot, about an albino villainess trying to destroy the city of Vista Del Mar, for a slight she suffered as a teen during the city's Seafood Jam event. This character is ALSO played by Kristen Wiig, so the film suddenly feels like a re-tread of "Austin Powers", with one actor playing both the hero and the main villain. Somehow she's manage to bio-engineer deadly mosquitoes, but I'm thinking Florida probably already had those, didn't they? Oh, wait, these explode or something. Great, like we need something else beyond killer bees and murder hornets. This character, Sharon Fisherman, sends her henchman to this Florida seaside resort town to unleash the deadly insects, with the promise that she'll be his girlfriend once the job is done. If the mosquitoes don't kill him, that is - I guess he didn't really think this one through?
But Edgar, this henchman/boyfriend of the evil villain encounters Barb & Star, who are visiting Florida after losing their jobs at Jennifer Convertibles. The furniture chain went out of business seven months prior and forgot to close the store they worked at - this throwaway gag was, I thought, the funniest line in the whole film. (I checked - in reality, the chain did get sold in 2020, but it had filed for bankruptcy once before, in 2010, and got in trouble for deceptive business practices back in 2004 and several years after that...). Edgar shares a giant drink bowl with the two women at the bar, and they all wake up in bed together. Because Florida, I guess.
The friendship between Barb & Star is tested by this love triangle with Edgar, but he gravitates more toward Star (I guess because she looks so much like his boss?) while Barb goes on her own journey of post-divorce self-discovery, riding on ATVs and playing in drum circles and going on hikes. Look, I'm glad these women are getting their act together and living their lives, but so freaking what?
Meanwhile, Edgar has managed to lose the microchip for the homing beacon for the mosquitoes, so another agent, one who doesn't seem to understand anything about hiding his identity, and who keeps accidentally giving out his name or his home address, appears on the scene to deliver another chip. This character's not funny at all, unfortunately, but he's one of several. Andy Garcia as a weirdly knowledgable or psychic shaman character isn't funny either.
The only other saving grace here is seeing Mark Jonathan Davis, also known as Richard Cheese, head of the band Lounge Against the Machine, appear several times as the main singer at the Vista Del Mar Hotel. I get that he can't sing any of the lounge covers of hard rock songs that he's famous for (Yeah, I own all of his albums, and I've seen him in concert four times) but his immense talent is wasted here since he's only allowed to sing original songs like "I Love Boobies". Still, it's great to see him working again after his eye surgery.
The rest of the time, I just couldn't really figure out where this movie was coming from, or what it was trying to say. Maybe it could have accomplished more if the story wasn't firing in ten different directions at any given time.
Also starring Kristen Wiig (last seen in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl"), Annie Mumolo (last seen in "The Boss"), Jamie Dornan (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Damon Wayans Jr. (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Kwame Patterson, Reyn Doi, Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween"), Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Rose Abdoo (also carrying over from "Friendsgiving"), Phyllis Smith (last seen in "Butter"), Mark Jonathan Davis (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Karen Maruyama (last seen in "Life of the Party"), Jayde Martinez, Tom Lenk (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Hank Rogerson (last seeni n "Running With the Devil"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Geostorm"), Reba McEntire (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Ian Gomez (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Patrick Bristow, Jordan Black (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Rachel Ramras, Gerry Bednob (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Elizabeth Kelly, Arina Gancicova, Avi Rothman (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), and the voice of Josh Robert Thompson.
RATING: 4 out of 10 topics at Talking Club
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