‘The Fabulous Four’ Movie Review: An Impressively Unfunny Comedy With Funny Women
Photo from Bleecker Street
From Jeremy Kibler
Surely a movie could carry itself with four comic dynamos, but The Fabulous Four commits the cardinal sin of any comedy: it’s not very funny. This is the type of terrible comedy that makes you begin counting the number of laughs (if any). To go one step further, it’s an impressively unfunny comedy with the likes of consummate talents Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally, and Sheryl Lee Ralph, making it that much more of a bummer. They are all fabulous and remain fabulous even after this lame, mostly incompetent dud, but everyone deserved better.
This fab four has been friends since college in New York. Marilyn (Midler) is the life of the party and now dabbles on TikTok; Lou (Sarandon) is an accomplished heart surgeon but also an uptight, germaphobic cat lady; Alice (Mullally) is a saucy singer with an appetite for younger men; and Kitty (Ralph) is a botanist and cannabis farmer. Having lost her husband only six months ago, Marilyn made the move to Key West (in a smart house no less, so there’s room for hackneyed “older folks figuring out technology” jokes). She’s also getting remarried, and Marilyn wants her three best girls there, including Lou, in spite of their decades-long rift. Alice and Kitty want Lou there, too, so they trick her into going by saying she won a six-toed cat from the Hemingway House (don’t ask, it’s cat-lady logic). Over the course of the weekend, can Lou let go of her grudge against Marilyn and create new memories?
The Fabulous Four might have coasted along on the pleasant vibes of these four women, but director Jocelyn Moorhouse (How to Make an American Quilt) and writers Ann Marie Allison & Jenna Milly (Golden Arm) don’t really assist in making that happen. The movie begins earnestly, showing and telling through photos of these actresses in their twenties cued to Sarandon’s voice-over. Maybe this will be a delightful, even poignant crowd-pleaser about aging, friendship, and reconciliation à la The First Wives Club. Maybe not.
There is such a strain to get laughs, which throws the comedic timing completely off from the word go. Lurching from one moment to the next (scenes either go on too long or entire scenes seem to be missing), the movie is jumpy in its rhythms while still feeling inert. Once the annoyingly jaunty music score sounds, we know we’re in for a dumbed-down comedy with wacky parasailing hijinks, Kegel balls being used as a weapon, and one-liners about smuggling weed in vaginas. Wedged in between everything is flimsy friction between friends that wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test and a subplot involving Kitty’s disapproving religious daughter and her gay grandson. If there are any surprises, it’s with one plot turn involving silver fox Ted (Bruce Greenwood), a Key West bar owner, only because there was the hope that the script wouldn’t stoop to being wrongheaded and just plain stupid (but, alas, it is).
Women’s stories will always be important, especially about women in their seventies, but is this the best material these actresses can get? Of the four, Sarandon is afforded the most opportunities to squeeze out a real, fully formed character with Lou. Mullally manages to still toss off a funny one-liner or two, but her Alice gets sidelined too often and spends most of the third act in a closet with a waiter. Lee grins and bears it, making the best of what she’s given (and the mere sight of Mrs. Howard from TV’s Abbott Elementary in a penis headband at a bachelorette party is admittedly amusing). Finally, Midler gets a couple of moments to burst through this throwaway material with her brassy personality, but her Marilyn is too often shrill and insufferable to care whether or not Marilyn and Lou reconcile.
There are glimmers of what could have been had these four been working with sharper, smarter writing and snappier direction. As a last-ditch effort before the end credits, Ralph and Midler (both formidable vocal performers) get to lead a choreographed musical number to “I Can See Clearly Now” on the wedding dance floor. It’s intended to send us on our way, as if we’ve all had a great time, but it’s more like a light at the end of the tunnel. As the late film critic Gene Siskel used to say about a movie being less interesting than watching its cast sit around having lunch, the idea of these ladies talking about their careers over BLTs never sounded more appealing.
Rating: 1/5
The Fabulous Four hits theaters on July 26, 2024.
