Sitting in Bars with Cake: Scrumptious!

Sitting in Bars with Cake (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for profanity, drug use and sexual candor

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang 

You wouldn’t know it from the title, or the needlessly chaotic initial 10-15 minutes, but once director Trish Sie’s modest little film settles down, it becomes one of the warmest, most touching odes to friendship I’ve seen in years.

 

Jane (Yara Shahidi, center) and her posse — from left, Alex (Charlie Morgan Patton),
Nora (Simone Recasner), Corinne (Odessa A'zion) and Liz (Maia Mitchell) — discover
that "cakebarring" is a great way to attract guys. (Note the cake at table center.)

Credit scripter Audrey Shulman, who clearly wrote from the heart; credit also the persuasively authentic performances by stars Yara Shahidi and Odessa A’zion.

This film’s back-story is equally enchanting. Shulman, a Nashville transplant who wound up in Los Angeles as a twentysomething, was celebrating best friend Chrissy Osmulski’s birthday in a bar in the summer of 2012. Shulman, an avid baker, brought along a cherry cake to share with Chrissy and several other friends; the tasty dessert drew the attention of other patrons, and Shulman suddenly realized that this could be a great way to meet guys.

 

Hence the beginning of what she dubbed “cakebarring.” Starting the following January, she vowed to bake a different cake each week, bringing it and her friends to a different venue each week, with the ultimate goal of 50 cakes by the end of the year. She recorded this tasty campaign in what became a popular blog — complete with recipes — which in turn led to an equally well received 2015 book.

 

Now, working alongside Sie, Shulman has adapted her adventures into a charming film. Shahidi’s Jane is Shulman’s alter ego, while A’zion’s Corinne stands in for Chrissy. They’re best friends totally into each other’s groove, despite being polar opposites. 

 

The bookish Jane, whip-smart but introverted, pursues law school studies apparently dictated by her imperious parents; baking becomes a respite during study breaks. By day, she works as an obsessively organized mailroom clerk in an office run by the somewhat grandmotherly Benita (Bette Midler, in a fleeting part that should have been expanded).

 

The wildly extroverted Corinne, in contrast, is a force of nature: an irrepressible free spirit who embraces any occasion at 15 on a 10-point scale, while bouncing from one joyous experience to the next. (“A human sparkler, a flash of color and light,” as Shulman described Chrissy.)

 

We can’t imagine Corinne keeping a job for more than two weeks. She likely regards sleep as a waste of time, and bemoans the fact that her shy roomie doesn’t work harder at “putting herself out there,” particularly when it comes to what she wears.

 

“If it works for Mr. Rogers,” Jane says defensively, at one point, “it works for me.”

 

Corinne groans … and A’zion is just as marvelous at exasperation, as every other emotion.

 

Let it also be said that costume designer Ciara Whaley obviously had a great time with Corinne’s wild outfits.

 

Peter Pan & Wendy: Fails to fly

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG, and too generous, despite violence, peril and child endangerment

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

On the one hand, Scottish novelist/playwright J.M. Barrie would be delighted to know that the characters he created, more than a century ago in a 1904 play, resonates strongly to this day.

 

Peter Pan (Alexander Molony, far left) and his new friends — from left, Wendy
(Ever Anderson), John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) — carefully spy
on Captain Hook and his motley pirate crew.

On the other hand, I suspect Barrie would be horrified by the liberties that scripters David Lowery and Toby Halbrooks have taken, with respect to the key relationship between Peter Pan and his arch-nemesis, Captain Hook.

But although absurd, that isn’t this live-action film’s biggest problem.

 

Ever Anderson is excellent as Wendy Darling, but Alexander Molony’s Peter Pan is a sorry excuse for this “boy who never grew up.” Lowery — who also directs — fails to draw a credible performance from his young actor. Molony’s line deliveries are flat and uninspired, and he fails to project the mischievous spirit — the sense of magic — that is essential to this character.

 

Far too often, Molony seems disinterested: unwilling — or unable — to display more emotion than one would expect during a first-round script reading.

 

No matter how well everybody else performs, they can’t overcome this lack of a convincing Peter Pan.

 

That’s a shame, because in other respects — the Pan/Hook gaffe aside — Lowery and Halbrooks are faithful to many of the clever details Barrie wove into his play, while making subtle adjustments more appropriate to our 21st century.

 

The story begins in 1911, mid-Edwardian England, as 13-year-old Wendy laments her imminent departure to boarding school. Dismayed by the thought of no longer being able to play with younger brothers John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe), she defiantly proclaims that she doesn’t want to grow up.

 

That plea is heard by Peter, far away in Neverland; he immediately floats into the Darling children’s bedroom, accompanied by his fairy companion, Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi). Peter first must capture his errant shadow, which Wendy sews back on with needle and thread, stabbing him slightly in the process. She soothes the pain by giving him a kiss (a thimble); he later reciprocates by giving her an acorn pendant (all details from Barrie’s play).

 

Thanks to an application of Tinker Bell’s sparkly pixie dust, Wendy, John and Michael are able to fly into the night sky, following Peter’s directions to head “second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning.” Daniel Hart and Oliver Wallace’s lush score swells at this point, with an orchestral echo of Sammy Cahn and Sammy Fain’s “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!,” from Disney’s 1953 animated classic (a nice touch).

 

The Sun Is Also a Star: Shines sweetly

The Sun Is Also a Star (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for suggestive content and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang

It’s refreshing to see a young adult romance that doesn’t involve people who are white and wealthy.

And aren’t suffering from some exotic, debilitating or fatal disease.

Despite her analytical cynicism, Natasha (Yara Shahidi) finds it hard to resist the charm
assault that Daniel (Charles Melton) mounts so effectively.

Director Ry Russo-Young’s The Sun Is Also a Star is a sweet little charmer, graced with the comfortable chemistry between stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton. Scripter Tracy Oliver hits the essential plot beats of Nicola Yoon’s best-selling 2016 novel, although the faith-oriented content is absent (likely viewed as one subtext too many, in a film already laden with considerable emotional baggage).

Russo-Young and cinematographer Autumn Durald also deliver a dreamy portrait of New York City at the bustling height of its melting-pot boisterousness: a vibrant, richly diverse cacophony of cultures, languages, colorful storefronts and wonderfully bizarre public art. It’s a side of the city far removed from Manhattan’s chic opulence, and much more exciting for this absence of aristocratic hauteur.

Jamaica-born Natasha Kingsley (Shahidi) is in a panic, desperately trying to reverse a deportation order mandating her family’s immediate return to their native country. Her father brought them to the States illegally almost a decade earlier, hoping for the better life of an American dream; a random ICE sweep now threatens to rip 17-year-old Natasha from the city she loves, and the educational opportunities that mean so much.

It’s literally the last day before they must return to Jamaica. Natasha leaves their apartment, hoping to get an early morning appointment with a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) case handler.

Elsewhere, first-generation Korean-American Daniel Bae (Melton), college-bound and carrying the weight of family expectation, heads off for a crucial final interview that could determine his entry to Dartmouth. His doting parents (Keong Sim and Cathy Shim) have long desired that he become a doctor — a plan emphasized via Korean ritual, when Daniel was but an infant — but he’d far rather be a poet.

Natasha is pragmatic to the point of cynicism, believing solely in reason, science and logic; if it can’t be quantified and/or manipulated, it doesn’t exist. Daniel is creative, passionate and open to the mysterious, mischievous vagaries of fate, destiny and dreams. He firmly accepts the caprice of deus ex machina improbability (and when’s the last time a film made an ongoing metaphor of that literary phrase?).