Campus comedy stars mom gone mild
Life of the Party (out of four) Starring Melissa McCarthy, Molly Gordon. Co-written and directed by Ben Falcone. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 105 minutes. PG Melissa McCarthy is no Rodney Dangerfield and that’s rather a shame.
Life of the Party could really have used some of the broad and edgy humour of the latter performer’s minor 1986 comedy classic Back to School. Both films share a similar story — a parent and child attending the same university and the fallout that ensues.
But director Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay along with McCarthy, seems to shy from going full-on Animal
House wacky and outrageous. There’s a sense throughout of anticlimactic scenes, empty air and missed opportunities. The result is tepid, tittering laughter rather than gut-busting hilarity.
McCarthy plays Deanna, a loving mom who learns, moments after dropping daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon) off for senior year, that her simpering rat of a husband has another woman on the side and wants a divorce. Deanna impulsively decides to finish the archeology degree she set aside 20 years earlier to put family first.
The usual hijinks of U.S. college life ensue, but it’s all pretty tame stuff. Deanna gets along well with her daughter’s friends, meets a much younger man who desperately wants more than sex among the library stacks and duels back and forth with her husband, who maintains a tight grip on the family purse strings.
There’s clearly an effort here and there to mix it up, with quirky characters like Leonor (Heidi Gardner), Deanna’s goth-y, agoraphobic roommate and Helen (Gillian Jacobs), an oddball friend of Maddie’s who spent eight years in a coma. Saturday Night Live alum Maya Rudolph is rather a scream as Deanna’s outspoken best friend, Christine.
But Deanna is all about sunshine and positive reinforcement when the role could have used some tartness to balance out the sweet. Also, bad girl Jennifer (Debby Ryan) just isn’t much of a challenge. How karmically apt it would have been for hubby Dan (Matt Walsh) and ice queen mistress Marcie ( Modern Family’s Julie Bowen) to get some major comeuppance, but they get off light — way too light. And that’s the problem throughout, a sense that director Falcone is pulling his punches, too timid to go for the gusto. McCarthy conveys a visceral sense of likability on screen and the audience will follow wherever she leads. It’s too bad that she, like Falcone, thinks less is more. More would definitely have been better.
And the climactic scene when pop princess Christina Aguilera shows up to save the day has more than a whiff of desperation. ( Back to School had Oingo Bongo and a score by frontman Danny Elfman, which was way cooler.)
So, yeah, you’re probably going to like rather than love Life of the Party. But as comedies go, it plays it far too safe to be counted among McCarthy’s best work. Perhaps it’s Falcone who needs to go back to school.