80 for Brady

Scott Hardie: “It sucked.”

Critics who praised this movie talked a lot about how wonderful Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, and Sally Field have been throughout their careers and how good at comedy they are. I agree, and that's why I wish that this movie had given them more actual jokes to work with. Scene after scene goes by with plenty of plot business to keep something happening until the movie (barely) crosses the 90-minute mark, but there's a severe shortage of anything resembling comedy, as if the screenplay was full of notes saying "improvise joke here" and nobody could think of any on set.

For example, Sally Field's character enters a contest to eat spicy hot wings, which is followed by a montage of her... simply eating chicken wings while her competitors drop out one by one. There's plenty of ways that the scene could have gone, from broad physical comedy as she overreacts to the spiciness, to triggering some weird or embarrassing side effect of her medication, to the contest unlocking some fierce inner competitiveness that she didn't know she had. No, none of that happens; other than a moment where she talks with her mouth full, there's no actual joke. What gives? Netflix's sitcoms Grace and Frankie and One Day at a Time weren't great, but they gave these stars plenty of funny material to work with, so the actresses definitely still have the chops.

The many celebrities making cameos get one joke apiece, the best one unexpectedly coming from Guy Fieri as he exits a portable toilet, and the dramatic scenes are decent (the characters are too underdeveloped for us to care as much as we should), but that's not enough to save the movie. What a disappointment.

− July 27, 2023 • more by Scott • log in or create an account to reply