MacLaine’s talents misused in comedy
An enduring talent can add a level of class to pedestrian material, even a saccharine effort such as “The Last Word.”
The big-screen comedy is fortunate to have Shirley MacLaine return to her first starring role in years. Unfortunately, both she and we in the audience are out of luck.
The film misuses the Oscar-winning star’s talent and wastes our time.
MacLaine plays Harriet Lauler, a prominent retired advertising executive with a perfectionist streak who finds fault in everyone she encounters.
When the gardener on her mansion’s spotless grounds trims the hedges against her instructions (top to bottom instead of base to peak), the thorny Harriet confiscates the clippers and dismisses him to do it herself. At the hair salon, she fluffs her own pageboy cut and ignores the stylist’s efforts to chat with her.
Then she returns to her dignified home and dines alone, with a side order of merlot and antidepressant medication. She’s publicly indomitable but not invulnerable.
As Harriet reads the death notices in the local newspaper, she sees testaments to family affection, colleagues’ esteem and community respect. Wanting to control her reputation from beyond the grave, she demands creative control over the inevitable eulogy by the begins touching new lives with a systematic program of calculating altruism and canned warmth. She drags the risk- averse Anne along as her reluctant co- conspirator.
MacLaine knows how to play contentious divas. She soared in “Terms of Endearment” (1984), “Postcards From the Edge” (1990) and “Bernie” ( 2011), but this script from first- timer Stuart Ross Fink is convenient and easy to the core.
Instead of making Harriet a three- dimensional piece of work, it turns her into a forgivable fusspot. When she takes over a boring radio station to revive its playlist with old jazz and rock hits, she sandwiches them between verbose tidbits about living in the moment that would have any listener reaching for the dial.
She does her community outreach by mentoring an underprivileged black 9- year- old ( precocious AnnJewel Lee Dixon) in contrived sassy dialogue that sounds like outtakes from “Diff’rent Strokes.”
The film’s essential drawback isn’t MacLaine’s performance but the thin, inconsistent character she is assigned.
The actress could do solid work as a lioness or a pussycat, but she doesn’t have the DNA to play a phony.