When their parents Buck and Deana Ellis (James Brolin and Diane Wiest) place the family home on the market, siblings Maura (Amy Poehler) and Kate (Tina Fey) learn that they have one weekend to clean out the junk from their old bedroom. Unhappy with the news, the recently divorced Maura and her hotheaded sister Kate make plans to throw one final bash to recapture their glory days with their former classmates. As the raging party begins to spiral out of control, the girls soon realize that there may not be a house left to sell once the dust settles.
I know this isn’t Star Wars but you’ll have to wait a day for it. This film definitely had a lot of promise considering the stars at the helm, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. They’ve had a lot comedic success individually and this the second time they’ve done a movie together (the first being a film called Baby Mama which I haven’t seen). The story for this one is a little predictable considering the film’s title but the film is about two sisters Maura and Kate (Poehler and Fey) who must come to terms with where they are in their lives during a weekend where they must clear their childhood bedroom so her parents can sell their house. They decide to throw a party in order to try to reclaim their glory days. So the underlying story is something you’ve probably seen before many times but you easily forget that here. The reason for that is the chemistry between Poehler and Fey. Poehler and Fey who are friends in real life (as far as I can see) and it shows here as it looks like they’re having fun here. They get to play characters that were not used to seeing (I would have initially guessed the opposite). It was initially weird to see them in those positions but I got used to it. Poehler here is the “straight man” Maura to Fey’s more crazy sister Kate but to try to subvert the initial predictability, it does not quite stay that way which was also predictable but I still liked. The whole family stuff, wasn’t as great and came off as a little cliche but Brolin and Weist at least made it bearable. This film is, after all, a comedy and it did have its moments. The film had some jokes, most of them worked and some of them did not work. The jokes that I found did not work as much were when the film tried to be raunchy and crude. These jokes followed along these lines and I did not find them as funny because it just seemed weird to me coming from Poehler and Fey. The party scenes near the end are all about regaining past glory and featured mostly middle-aged people being crazy which worked for the most part except for an overused gag of a character named Alex (Bobby Moynihan). The film also tried to introduce a love interest to Poehler’s Maura in the form of a man named James (Ike Barinholtz) which I guess gave Maura something to do but these scenes did not work for me since I didn’t think they had any chemistry. I also enjoyed the addition of SNL cast members woven into the plot in supporting roles such as: Maya Rudolph, Moynihan, Rachel Dratch, Kate McKinnon, and Chris Parnell who each added to the film. Overall, this was a good comedy which was elevated by the actors involved.
Score: 7.5/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
