Review: Sisters (2015)

* * *
Director: Jason Moore
Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler

Sisters is the kind of movie that looks like it was a lot of fun to make. It's a lot of fun to watch, too, but not as much fun as it seems like it would have been to make. It features a story which isn't particularly developed beyond its basic premise - Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are sisters - which results in a bit of narrative shagginess over the course of its 118 minutes, but the anarchic glee with which Fey and Poehler and a ton of other names from Saturday Night Live and the comedy world beyond (to name a few: Maya Rudolph, John Leguizamo, Samantha Bee, Bobby Moynihan, Rachel Dratch, and Kate McKinnon) come together to play is more than enough to make it worth the price of admission. Sisters isn't as nuanced or as clever as Fey or Poehler's best work, but it's one of the most flat out funny movies I've seen in some time.

Review: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)

* *
Director: Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
Starring: Tina Fey

Meet Kim. She's a 40-something woman with a good job that leaves her unfulfilled, a relationship that she's decided to remain half-way invested in despite feeling unfulfilled by it, and a life that is marked by an inescapable sense of sameness and lack of forward movement. She's complacently unhappy and so when the opportunity comes to go to Afghanistan to work as a war correspondent, she sees it as no less than an opportunity to scrap her life entirely and remake it from scratch. "That is the most American white lady story I've ever heard," is the response she gets when she explains what she's doing in Kabul. If that moment was indicative of the level of self-awareness that Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was dealing in generally, it would be a much better movie, but it's ambitions are much lower. While the film certainly has its moments, it's ultimately not more than a star vehicle built on an uneasy mishmash of genres.

Review: Admission (2013)

* * 1/2
Director: Paul Weitz
Starring: Tina Fey, Paul Rudd

Admission is the kind of movie you should dislike on principle. It's a paint by numbers romantic comedy that takes no chances and, really, it's the kind of movie Hollywood needs to make less of, not more of. Yet, it is blessed by the strength of its two leads, who exude enough charm and talent that they make it seem more compelling than it has any business being. It's not enough to make it "good," exactly, but it is enough to make you like it despite its flaws. I realize that it probably sounds like I'm damning it with faint praise, but I actually did like Admission a fair bit. It's not the best thing anyone involved has ever appeared in, but it plays well on a lazy summer evening.

Review: Date Night (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Shawn Levy
Starring: Steve Carell, Tina Fey

What's not to like about Date Night? It stars two thoroughly likeable actors, features funny supporting turns from Mark Wahlberg, James Franco and Mila Kunis, it has a genuinely funny script, and is helmed by the director of - actually, having just glanced at Shawn Levy's IMDB page, never mind what else he's directed. The point is, Date Night is really good.

Steve Carell and Tina Fey star as Phil and Claire Foster, a nice suburban couple in a bit of a rut. Sure, they make a point of having a date night every week, but the spark has definitely started to fade. After discovering that friends who seemed happy are set to get a divorce, both Claire and Phil realize that they need to make a little more effort in their relationship to avoid the same fate. As part of this effort they get dressed up and head into the city to try a new restaurant, but when getting a table proves to be next to impossible, Phil claims that they're the Tripplehorns, a couple who actually do have a reservation but are nowhere to be seen.

Taking the reservation proves to be a fatal mistake as soon afterwards Phil and Claire are confronted by a couple of goons (Jimmi Simpson and Common), who reveal that the Tripplehorns have been using a stolen flash drive to blackmail Joe Miletto (Ray Liotta). After escaping from Miletto's men, Phil and Claire track down her former client, Grant Holbrooke (Wahlberg), a security expert with an aversion to shirts who helps them locate the real Tripplehorns. I won't spoil the turns the plot takes from there but, needless to say, the Fosters' very eventful night is far from over.

Carell and Fey are obviously very skilled comedic performers but a large part of what makes Date Night so successful is that they can be funny on a small scale. Yes, there are moments when their characters break down into hysterics, but for the most part both Carell and Fey underplay and simply react to all the crazy people who are suddenly all around them. Phil and Claire are so funny because they don't know that they're being funny and the film itself works because they're believable as an ordinary couple in an extraordinary set of circumstances.

Generally speaking, comedies don't have to dig very deep in order to achieve their goals. They just have to succeed at making you laugh, they don't necessarily have to have characters who are believable and relatable - though the best ones, of course, do. I wouldn't rank Date Night amongst the very best comedies ever, but I do think that it's better than average and that in Claire and Phil it portrays a realistically happy but bored modern couple. What happens to them isn't very realistic, but the issues at play between their characters and they way that they relate to each other is. Carell and Fey make for a great team and hopefully they will work together again in the future (with Date Night's domestic gross coming in at just under $100 million, I suspect that they will).

Review: Mean Girls (2004)

* * * 1/2
Director: Mark Waters
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert, Tina Fey

I was well out of high school by the time Mean Girls hit theatres, but the fact that so much of it still rang true speaks to how little things actually change even as things are changing. The accessories are different (I sure as hell didn’t have a cell phone when I was in high school), but the games are the same, and are explored here in a way that effectively combines the real and the satirical. So, if you have yet to experience this gem of a movie, I have but one thing to say: Boo, you whore!

Mean Girls was made during that ever so brief period of time between “Lindsay Lohan, child star” and “Lindsay Lohan, tabloid train wreck” and finds her playing Cady, the daughter of two researchers who has spent most of her life being home-schooled and living in Africa. When her mother (Ana Gasteyer, good but underused here) gets a tenured position at a university, the family is uprooted and Cady is thrust into the hazardous world of high school. She quickly becomes friends with outcasts Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese), and then finds herself adopted by the Plastics, the trio of Barbie-esque girls who rule the school. With Janis’ encouragement, Cady becomes a mole, helping plot to destroy the Plastics from the inside out. The only problem is that before she knows it, Cady has become one of them.

I think it’s safe to say that writer/co-star Tina Fey has, at the very least, a passing familiarity with Heathers, as that titular clique echoes pretty soundly in the Plastics. Watching the two films back to back, it seems to me that Mean Girls succeeds where Heathers fails, because the latter focuses so much energy on trying to shock you. While Mean Girls does descend occasionally into the surreal, as when Cady likens her classmates to animals in Africa, there’s an overriding sense of realism to the story as a whole. Horrifying as it may be to think, people like Regina George (Rachel McAdams) do exist and would effortlessly attract lackeys such as Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and Karen (Amanda Seyfried).

I would argue that the strongest aspect of this film is its script, which understands teenage psychology well enough to take it seriously even as it is ripping it to shreds and taking careful aim at a few different targets. There’s the obvious target of high school friend/enemy dynamics, the dubious “reclaiming” of words like “bitch” and “whore” by girls who use them as terms of endearment, and a broad lampooning of parents who gladly undermine their authority as parents in order to be their kid’s friend (“I’m not a regular mom. I’m a cool mom!”). The acting is strong, too, particularly from McAdams. There is absolutely no good reason why you should ever feel sorry for Regina (well, okay, maybe when she gets hit by the bus), but personally I always do find myself feeling kind of sorry for her when she’s exiled from the Plastics’ table in the lunchroom. The way that McAdams manages to make that moment work and give it some depth never ceases to amaze me.

While I have a lot of love for this movie, I’ve got to acknowledge that it does have its flaws. The ending is a little preachy, giving a definite sense of a lesson being learned and these scenes don’t really fit seamlessly with the rest of the film. However, even they have their moments (“Do you even go to this school?” “I just have a lot of feelings.”).

Review: Baby Mama (2008)

* * 1/2
Director: Michael McCullers
Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler

Baby Mama is a funny, if soft, film about one woman’s quest to have a baby. It’s not entirely successful as a film – its flaws are many and in some cases glaring – but it has its heart in the right place and provides a nice showcase for two female performers who know what most modern comedies seem to have forgotten – that when it comes to women “funny” and “clumsy” aren’t the same thing.

The story begins with Kate (Tina Fey), the 37-year-old V.P. of an organic food company who, after several unsuccessful attempts to conceive, decides to have a baby using a surrogate mother. She goes to Chaffee Bicknell, a company named after its eternally fertile head, played by Sigourney Weaver. Through the agency, Kate is paired with Angie (Amy Poehler), whose breakup with her ne’er do well boyfriend (Dax Sheppard) will result in her moving in with Kate. Kate and Angie have an Odd Couple-like (Odd Couple-lite?) relationship where Kate’s Type A tendencies come into conflict with Angie’s slovenly ways.

One of the disappointing things about this movie is that it consistently hints at how sharp it might have been. The scenes between Kate and Chaffee, especially, comment on the phenomenon of babies as business, two things which were once seen as diametrically and intrinsically opposed to each other. Chaffee refers to surrogacy as “outsourcing,” explaining that it’s essentially no different than hiring a nanny once the baby is born. This first scene between the two not only highlights the way that babies have become an industry, but also touches on the real life moral/ethical conundrum of women from prosperous nations using surrogates from developing nations because it’s cheaper. But the film only touches on these elements briefly, and then moves on to other things and becomes softer and fluffier and move Lifetimey with every twist of the plot.

Part of the problem with Baby Mama is that it’s a lot heavier on plot than it has to be. A large section of the story is concerned with the question of whether or not Angie actually is pregnant, and this part of the plot combined with Kate’s budding relationship with Rob (Greg Kinnear) leads to an ending that is absolutely predictable and a little unsatisfying. That the film doesn’t really need these elements is demonstrated by how well it works when it focuses on the relationship between the two women as they negotiate their differences and their situation. In their prenatal class they’re mistaken for “wesbian wovers” by the lisping instructor, whose suggestion that Kate help Angie prepare for giving birth by massaging her with olive oil is met with Angie’s idea to just “spray some Pam” on herself before the baby comes out.

Performance-wise, the actors in this film are all likeable enough that it makes you wish they were in a better movie. Poehler is appropriately wacky as Angie while also providing her with some much needed humanity so that she’s more than just a sketch character, although it must be admitted that she’s a little too old for this particular role. Steve Martin, in a small role as Kate’s boss, is wonderfully deadpan and Sheppard matches Poehler wacky for wacky as her dimwitted ex. But, ultimately, this is Fey’s movie and as a performer she really delivers. There aren’t a lot of women playing leading roles in movies who are as relatable as Fey, and that’s what really holds this particular film together.

There are a lot of laughs in this movie, but not enough that they distract you from the inherent problems with the way that the story is put together. Fey and Poehler are enjoyable as the two leads and it’s too bad they didn’t save themselves for a film more worthy of the effort.