MELISSA GOES BACK TO SCHOOL
McCarthy’s ready to party (and more) in new comedy,
MOVIES
Big release on May 11:
Life of the Party.
Big picture: It’s like Animal House meets Back to School meets Desperate Housewives. Deanna (Melissa McCarthy) is dumped by her husband of more than two decades. With ample free time, she opts to return to college to finish the degree she once abandoned to raise a family. Naturally, she ends up in the same school — and even classes — as her teenage daughter.
And, of course, the higher education experience teaches her many valuable lessons: to have self-confidence and a sense of purpose, how to hold her liquor … and how to sleep with a frat boy in a library. The movie wins points alone just for this one-liner after said frat boy seduction. How was he afterward? Scared, Deanna tells her daughter, “but in a good way, like when you intentionally go through a haunted house.”
Forecast: The perfect motherdaughter movie for Mother’s Day.
TV
Big events: Safe (Netflix, May 10); Patrick Melrose (CraveTV, May 12).
Big picture: Safe does for gated, rich suburbs what Broadchurch (the British version) did for quaint, English villages: make them terrifying. In a series crafted by novelist Harlan Coben, this miniseries stars Michael C. Hall (no longer playing the killer!) as a father, surgeon and widower who moves his family into a peaceful gated community — only to have one of his daughters vanish and find himself surrounded by secretive, creepy murder suspects.
Meanwhile, how do you top playing a narcissistic, drugdependent social misfit like Sherlock Holmes? If you’re Benedict Cumberbatch, by playing a worse one in a five-episode series about an alcoholic playboy trying to escape his demons. It’s an adaptation of novelist Edward St. Aubyn’s semi-autobiographical work and takes you through four dysfunctional decades in the titular character’s life. The stellar supporting cast includes Jennifer Jason Leigh and Holliday Grainger. Memorably, our dysfunctional leading man introduces himself to a fellow patient as, “Patrick. Narcissistic. Schizoid. Suicidal. Alcoholic.” It’s Sherlock Holmes meets Mad Men’s Don Draper meets Californication’s Hank Moody.
Forecast: You don’t need to be psychic to predict more serialized crime dramas and more anti-heroes.
MUSIC
Big releases on May 11: Arctic Monkeys (Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino); Beach House (7).
Big picture: Frontman Alex Turner recently listed some of the artists that served as inspiration on the Monkeys’ latest album, including Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Joe Cocker, Dr. John and The Rolling Stones. Check us in to your Tranquility Base Hotel, sir! It sounds much more inviting than Hotel California. Meanwhile, Beach House welcomes you into its seventh album of dream pop. Good effort. However, the band will always be the second best band with Beach in its title. Forecast: The Arctic Monkeys told Mojo their new songs were partly inspired by the “societal insanity” during 2016 and 2017. Finally, something good comes out of that depressing period of chaos! (You’ll enjoy their new effort, but not enough to stop building a time machine in your basement to go back to 2015.)