SISTERS
Universal Pictures
Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for Shockya. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes.
Grade: B
Director: Jason Moore
Written by: Paula Pell
Cast: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ike Barinholtz, John Leguizamo, Kate McKinnon, Madison Davenport
Screened at: AMC Empire, NYC, 12/15/15
Opens: December 18, 2015
Who needs to see the latest episode of “Star Wars” when you can get similar thrills by watching the demolition of a Florida house with walls caving in and especially the total collapse of a swimming pool which becomes buried? “Sisters,” filmed in parts of New York to stand in for the Sunshine State focuses on a house party that makes fraternity house blasts look like the debates between Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal. In looking into the mayhem introduced by Katie Ellis (Tina Fey) and her sister Maura Ellis (Amy Poehler), we realize that the two are just growing up despite being in their forties (in real life Amy Poehler is 44 and Tina Fey a year older) as the two are said to have missed going through their expected years of debauchery and are trying to make up for the lost time in a single night.
The movie is filled with comic and some sentimental dialogue to match the rapid-fire action and is ablaze with well-cast extras, each of whom does a job to enhance the rep of the hosts. It help Katie and Maura that the house is not even theirs but one belonging to their parents Deanna (Dianne Wiest) and Bucky (James Brolin), who now find their digs too large and have taken final action to sell and move to another location. What’s more, the sisters are not too eager to leave the place spotless since they had expected to inherit the place only to find that it’s being sold to a pair of yuppies. The more destruction the better, they figure, at least until they find out, too late, that they will lose a lot of cash if the buyers change their minds.
This is clearly Poehler and Fey’s movie, one which you could almost imagine their having a wild party even with no guests. They have been choreographed into an array of exciting showbiz-style dancers to entertain their many guests while Poehler’s Maura has a romantic liaison with a neighboring contractor, James (Ike Barinholtz), a guy who, if they got together for keeps will probably have to settle for being a lifelong straight-man to his zany wife.
The wild guests include the off-the-wall Alex (Bobby Moynihan), uninhibited even before he tokes up on cocaine and alcohol , Hae Won (Greta Lee), a Korean-American nail parlor worker, Hae Won (Greta Lee) who works in a nail salon and is assumed by the hostesses to be an exploited worker, a boozy, hail-fellow Dave (John Leguizamo), Brinda (Maya Rudolph). a woman who invites herself and plans revenge for being passed over when the email bids went out, and Pazuzu (John Cena), who comes right out of a muscle magazine to supply the drugs from coke to birth control pills that will make the party take off though at first its upper-middle-class style conversations look as though it will be an early evening.
After a while, the overlong (at almost two hours) becomes repetitive, though the destruction happily increases by the minute, the crudity now and then giving way to a sentimental romance between Maura and James.
Rated R. 118 minutes. © Harvey Karten, Member, New York Film Critics Online
Story – C+
Acting – B
Technical – B
Overall – B