Teaming up for the first time since Bridesmaids, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo not only star but co-wrote this shipwreck of overblown drivel. A catastrophic comedy that would have been best cut down to a 20-minute sketch show, just so we don’t have to sit through the pain of Jamie Dornan’s excessive musical numbers for one.
If ridiculous is what you are after then look no further than the middle-aged duo of Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig), middle of the road Americans who have been best friends for eternity, who not only look like throwbacks to the 80s’ but never seem to have left. They work together as sales assistants in a furniture store, a job, which to them, is the highlight of their hum-drum lives. With the store closing down, the duo finds themselves jobless but this is one pair that innocently and hyper annoyingly look on the bright side of life.
After a fleeting moment with a friend who has just got back from the middle-aged heaven of Vista Del Mar in Florida, the incessant chatterboxes decide to take a holiday; you know just to do something wild in their lives for a change. On arrival, we are graced with a big musical number in a hotel lobby and the insanity only builds from there with the introduction of the villain of the piece, Sharon, played rather convincingly incognito like by Wiig, looking reminiscent of Johnny Depp’s version of Willy Wonka. Sharon wants revenge on the town of Vista Del Mar, a town in which she spent her youth, friendless and bullied, by unleashing a swarm of mosquitoes from hell.
Throw in Jamie Dornan’s hapless Edger, Sharon’s right-hand man and neglected lover to put her plan into place and we have the major sex appeal (yes he gets his Pecs out on a few occasions), the film richly deserves. After a chance meeting at the bar, a fishbowl sized cocktail laced with some kind of drug, Barb, Star and Edgar wakes up in a stacked sandwiched the following morning which could threaten their friendship.
With Will Farrell and Adam McKay as producers that tells you all you need to know for the tone of this tone-deaf comedy. This is a comedy that constantly pokes the finger of fun at the humourless muddle-aged women who regard culottes as gods. Yes, they take a piece of clothing associated with a certain age of woman and flog that joke to death right until the very end credits.
Just as a side hustle, the likes of Morgan Freeman as a crab, Andy Garcia as a roaming lothario aka the same character he played in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Damon Wayans as a not so secretive undercover villain’s apprentice all make cameos to add to the insanity and ludicrousness of a comedy that had so much potential… on paper.
The film is out everywhere you rent movies NOW!
