One star. Rated R, for raunch, profanity, crude sexual content, drug use and violence
By Derrick Bang
Well, this one lived down to
lowest expectations.
And then some.
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| The calm before the storm: Jess (Scarlet Johansson, center) bubbles during a cheerful call from her fiancé, while her friends — from left, Blair (Zoë Kravitz), Alice (Jillian Bell), Pippa (Kate McKinnon) and Frankie (Ilana Glazer) — try to hasten the chat, so they can continue their debauched evening. |
Director/co-scripter Lucia
Aniello’s unholy mash-up of Bridesmaids
and Weekend at Bernie’s is a ghastly
failure on all levels; it’s a forced and thoroughly tasteless comedy, which
repeatedly attempts to mangle humor from material that never could have seemed
funny on the printed page, let alone on the big screen.
This is a desperation flick ...
as in, every cast member looks desperate at all times, no doubt seeking the
nearest exit.
“Dying is easy,” Peter O’Toole’s
Alan Swann insists, in 1982’s My Favorite
Year, as he quotes an apocryphal Hollywood chestnut. “Comedy is hard.”
The actual attribution remains in
question, but the sentiment is truer now than ever, because far too many of
today’s so-called comedy writers take the lazy way out. As with horror films
that splatter gore on the screen in an effort to conceal their inability to
induce actual terror, Aniello and co-scripter Paul W. Downs clearly believe
that relentless dollops of vulgar, randomly inserted remarks about bodily
functions, along with repeated glimpses of penis-shaped sex toys, represent the
height of humor.
Not. Even. Close.
When an actress of Scarlett
Johnasson’s skill can’t make headway with the steady barrage of clumsy
one-liners that pass for dialog in this film, All Concerned should have
recognized the failings of the source material.
A brief college-days flashback
illuminates the sisterhood bond between Jess (Johansson), Alice (Jillian Bell),
Blair (Zoë Kravitz) and Frankie (Ilana Glazer). A decade later, life and
careers have frayed this connection. Blair has become an immaculately dressed,
high-profile businesswoman; Frankie is a hyper-politicized, save-the-whales
activist; Alice is — by her own definition — a much-loved schoolteacher.
The image-conscious Jess, running
for Congress, is losing ground to an opponent who gains favorable media bumps
for tweeting dick pics (a scenario which, sadly, isn’t far removed from
reality). Jess is engaged to marry nice-guy Peter (also Downs), which gives
micro-managing Alice the perfect excuse for the “ultimate” bachelorette party,
in flesh- and sin-laden Miami.
