Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Lift your spirits
BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR
‘‘ There’s a touch of the Marx Brothers and Vic and Bob in this madcap film
It’s freezing cold, “going out” means a whizz around Morrisons, and no one has the foggiest when this new lockdown is going to end. Thankfully, two middle-aged Midwesterners are coming to the rescue. Barb (Annie Mumolo) and Star (Kristen Wiig) have given up waiting for cinemas to reopen and are delivering a helping of sun-dappled silliness to our living rooms.
Since co-writing and co-starring in 2011’s Bridesmaids, Mumolo and Wiig’s comedy seems to have taken a surreal turn. There’s a touch of the Marx Brothers and a hint of Vic and Bob to the daft diversions in this madcap film about two pals who get caught in a crazy crime plot while holidaying in Florida.
This one had me laughing from its opening scene. I’m not entirely sure why watching a chubby paperboy in headphones lip-synching to Barbra Streisand left me so helpless but hats off to whoever discovered Hawaiian child actor Reyn Doi.
Jamie Dornan is surprisingly funny as a reluctant terrorist who falls for both Wiig’s master criminal Sharon and her excitable tourist Star. His inner conflict is expressed in one of the film’s best sequences, an auto-tuned power ballad that boasts some of the most literal lyrics in musical history.
And, after seeing this film, you won’t ever be able to look at Morgan Freeman without thinking of a mournful crab or hear a lounge pianist without thinking of Mark Jonathan Davis’s wildly inappropriate Richard Cheese.
His “I Love Boobies” song has been submitted for an Oscar but I’m still humming the jaunty melody of “Several Of My Friends From High School Have Recently Passed”.
These are hard times but sometimes you just have to laugh.