Universal Pictures 1 hour 58 minutes R Reviewed December 18, 2015<\/p>\n
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler go together like Laverne and Shirley or Lucy and Ethel, or Peanut Butter and Jelly. But in this case, they\u2019re more like the guys from The Hangover or Neighbors or even This is the End minus the apocalypse. This film feels like a Judd Apatow movie and there are some laughs, but not as many as we expected from these two talented comedians. It\u2019s not as raunchy as the guys\u2019 films, but they do dress better.<\/p>\n
Paula Pell is a writer and actress known for her smarts putting together funny sketches for Saturday Night Live. She says when her partner talked about selling their home, she thought about how she\u2019d feel if her parents decided to sell the home she grew up in. It grew into a film with just that premise adding a blow out party as a last blast with outrageous old friends and even more outrageous antics to destroy the house before the new owners take over.<\/p>\n
Poehler is Maura, the younger, more together sister with a good job. Fey plays the bust out who has a daughter, a failed marriage, no job and all kinds of issues. She liked that Poehler and she actually switched which roles the audience would expect them to play. She also liked that they got to do a lot of physical comedy. \u201cWhat I\u2019m excited about in this film is there\u2019s a lot of punching slapping, throwing, lifting, cheering, crying, screaming, FIRE, water, EARTH, air, MUD! there\u2019s a lot of it!\u201d It gets pretty crazy.<\/p>\n
Pitch Perfect Director Jason Moore called it \u201can embarrassment of riches to have all of these comedians in one room together. There\u2019s SNL\u2019s Bobby Moynihan doing ridiculous bits as he gets higher and higher at the blow out. Wrestler John Cena as Pazuzu is hilarious as the drug dealer dealing with a bunch of amateurs. Semantha Bee is totally out there. Maya Rudolph is the sister\u2019s hater from the past who\u2019s really pissed she didn\u2019t get invited so she crashes the festivities. She\u2019s really over the top in this part in a bad way. It\u2019s forced. John Leguizamo as Dave is funny in a crass way. Greta Lee as Hae-won, a Mani-Pedi specialist who crashes the party. These are not all likable characters.<\/p>\n
Moore says Poehler and Fey have a past from when they were two young comedy ladies in Chicago and already act like sisters on the set, even finishing each other\u2019s sentences. They spar in a few scenes that drew laughs, especially trying on clothes for the party and the synchronized dance from the past they perform taking over the dance floor.<\/p>\n
They both look amazing, but it seemed like this was more a series of sketches than a cohesive story. Even explanations of their personalities and past from their parents, played by James Brolin and Dianne Wiest, kind of come out of nowhere. And Tina\u2019s Kate has a daughter who is more attached to her sister than to her Mom.<\/p>\n
Another Chicagoan plays Poehler\u2019s love interest. Ike Barinholtz, Neighbors, The Mindy Project, is emerging as a staple in comedic roles. He was a neighbor of ours in Chicago and went to the same school as our kids. In the film, he\u2019s a neighbor living in a house near their childhood home, he\u2019s single and cute. He\u2019s one of the sanest of the bunch in the film, and gets a chance to show his comedy chops getting friendly with Poehler. Stay for the outtakes over the credits for one of his best lines.<\/p>\n
Besides liking to work with Poehler and the rest of the cast and crew, Fey says she could really relate to the story of acting out when she was about to lose forever the home she grew up in. Too many memories. Even now, she has great affection for her own family home. \u201cAnd I still like, as soon as i get to my parents\u2019 house, I leave my shoes everywhere, I eat EVERYTHING, I eat non-stop, I take a nap on the living room floor, I just immediately take over.\u201d But in this movie they make a mess of it till they put it all back together at the very end.<\/p>\n
Is this worth your bucks? This is not a great movie. It didn\u2019t deserve to be a feature length film. It feels more like a TV program. There are a few cool bits, but the party gets pretty silly, except for Bobby Moynihan who keep floating by doing some amazing things. This is not as edgy as The Hangover, but it tries too hard to be sentimental as well as funny. These sites could have thrown a better party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Universal Pictures 1 hour 58 minutes R Reviewed December 18, 2015 Tina Fey and Amy Poehler go together like Laverne and Shirley or Lucy and Ethel, or Peanut Butter and Jelly. But in this case, they\u2019re more like the guys from The Hangover or Neighbors or even This is the End minus the apocalypse. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,35,36,33],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-amy-poehler","tag-comedy","tag-judd-apatow","tag-tina-fey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":456,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions\/456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}