2.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for sexual candor, drug content and blue humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.11.18
This is a mildly amusing, occasionally endearing 30-minute movie.
Unfortunately, it runs 105 minutes.
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| Deanna (Melissa McCarthy, with paddle) is delighted when her daughter's sorority sisters enthusiastically accept her as a member. |
At its core, this story has a nifty message of empowerment, seizing the day, and making lemonade when life extends only lemons. (Or the other way around, as one of these characters insists.) It’s a solid premise: Unexpectedly divorced, middle-aged woman returns to college in order to earn the degree she was one short year from obtaining.
That she happens to choose the university where her daughter is beginning her senior year, clearly adds to the comedic potential. Not a bad start.
Unfortunately, star Melissa McCarthy too frequently clutters up the film with her tediously unfunny shtick. Ergo, school’s out.
Just like the aforementioned young woman who mixes up the lemons/lemonade proverb, McCarthy clearly misunderstood one of filmmaking’s golden rules: that less is more. She seems to believe that more is more, when in fact — as becomes blindingly obvious on numerous occasions, as this flick stumbles its way to end of term — more is much, much less.
McCarthy takes a leaden one-liner — or an embarrassing calamity such as flop sweat, or an ancient, been-there-tired-of-that gag such as marijuana-induced giggles — and repeats it until we scream for mercy. Apparently (perceptively) concerned that the bit isn’t that funny to begin with, she beats it into submission, under the misguided assumption that reiteration confers hilarity.
It does not. It confers eye-rolling exasperation.
That’s the frequent reaction to this film. Every time McCarthy and director Ben Falcone bring us to a reasonably happy place — a point where we think, well, maybe this won’t be so awful — she stages another of her seemingly desperate bids for chuckles, thereby bringing everything to a dead stop.
She’s like a little kid: Looka me! Looka me! Looka me!
She and real-life husband Falcone have collaborated on three films now: He directs; she stars; they share scripting credit. Given that their previous partnerships have yielded 2014’s Tammy and 2016’s The Boss — both blindingly gawdawful flops — you’d think Warner Bros. would have thought long and hard, before granting them a third time at bat.
Because while it’s true Life of the Party is somewhat better than those stinkers, that’s damning with awfully faint praise.
