Sisters

Q: Where is your Star Wars Review?

A: It’s in your mother’s asshole.

Q: You’re not going to review it?

A: Yes, I am, but not until my nephew Jimmy gets back from his retreat. Then he and I will review it together. Jimmy is the master of sci-fi, just read his Matrix and Avatar reviews for proof.

Q: What kind of retreat is he at?

A: It was described to me as “Outward Bound” with Magic: The Gathering. Also, entirely indoors.

Q: So, once he gets back you’ll do the review?

A: Yes. And then you can find it in your mother’s asshole.

Q: Cool. I know where that is.

For now, you’ll have to make do with the following.

There’s a scene in Sisters where Rachel Dratch makes a little speech about walking past a shop window and seeing an old woman looking back at her. She waves to her, the old lady waves back, and then Dratch realizes it’s her own reflection. First of all: Who’s that fucking stupid? I mean, other than dogs in Youtube videos. Second: This trite crap is supposed to be important to the story. A middle-aged woman faces the loss of her youth. That moment when she realizes she’s past the prime of her life, past the age of maximum fun.

She’s fucking right that she’s no longer fun. Not in this piece of shit movie. Nobody is. This thing is a miserable, depressing affair.

That window reflection bit is nothing new. We’ve heard the story before about someone looking in the mirror and wondering who the old person staring back is. Rather than stick to the obvious, though, Sisters should have flipped that crap upside down and shaken the hell out of it until all the coins, Chapstick and comedy gold fell out of its pockets. Dratch should have looked in that window and, while the audience expected her to say she saw herself, she should have seen someone else, someone she hated, or someone who didn’t wave back. She should have gone through that window and tried to beat the shit out of whomever it was, only to realize she was too old to kick ass like she once did.

As it is, Sisters brings up the topic of age but does Jack Shit with it. Even less, actually. Let’s say Jack Shit, Jr. Instead, this movie wallows in the sort of crap you’re supposed to age out of. And I don’t mean that it finds meaning in putting old people in youthful situations. I mean, it acts like it’s still funny when old people do the stupid shit young people do. It tries to mine its comedy from cheap ripoffs of teen sex comedies.

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey play sisters who return to their childhood home after their parents have put if up for sale. They have to clean out their old rooms. Of course, since this is unimaginative moviemaking, one sister must be the goodie-two-shoes (Poehler) and one has to be irresponsible (Fey). But, like with everything else in this movie, writer Paula Pell and director Jason Moore don’t provide sharp character details. Rather, they rely on the audience already knowing the stereotypes from a zillion previous shitty movies.

Through montage and horseshit, Poehler and Fey’s characters decide to throw one last party at their old house for all their high school friends. This is where the movie could have had the balls or the brains to make a point about aging, but it doesn’t. Part of this appears to be laziness, but mostly it just seems like neither Pell nor Moore are any good at making movies.

Unless you’re stupid rich or a generous tipper, everyone’s gonna think you’re an asshole for acting younger than you are. I have two thoughts on this subject. The first is that even if you hated high school, you should go to your 20-year reunion because it’s the last time the people you used to jerk off to are going to still look jerk-off worthy. After that, time flies past you like it’s a bus behind schedule and you’re waiting at the stop in a wheelchair. Second, there’s a time in every life to put away childish ideas and childish games. There’s a time to accept your age and find pleasure in the things older people do. That is, stay home with a really soft throw blanket, get shit-faced drunk alone on box wine and post angry comments on local news web sites in ALL CAPS. Have you ever seen this? It’s all me, and it’s fucking fun.

After the movies gives lip service to the matter of age, the movie moves on to trying to get laughs from ugly, old people performing low-grade teen comedy hijinx. People get drunk, people get high. A pool overflows. The house gets trashed. Middle-aged women are worried what their parents will think. The bulk of this movie feels like a community theater production of Kidd and Play’s House Party, performed by school teachers, bankers and real estate brokers by day. It’s fucking gross, embarrassing and stupid.

Rather than feel bad for the characters on screen for trying to relive their youth, I felt bad for the actors for having to act this shit out. It didn’t help that it was such a tired, wet lump of bad jokes. I’m not sure what fucking genius thought we’d want to see a classmate who is disliked by the others for being the painfully unfunny guy who always tried too hard, but boy does the movie give us a lot of him. Other characters show up for a sour and ill-timed punchline and then disappear. There is a bizarre subplot featuring a Korean manicurist that’s as out of place as a turd in the punch bowl. 

Actually, I’ve seen a few turds in punch bowls. So, let’s say a severed foot in the guacamole.

Moore is a shit director. The movie feels as lifeless as a sack of drowned kittens. The jokes have unfocused origins and punchlines that plop like--well, okay, here’s a good place for that turd in the punchbowl analogy. Characters filter in and out without establishing personalities. 

Pell writes a shit script that relies too much on cliches. The character definitions are about as crisp as something a two-year-old would make from Play-Doh. Poehler and Fey as the two sisters are whiny pains in the ass. It’s hard to give a shit for such irredeemable losers.

Overall, it’s just a shitty movie and a crap-ass way to face aging. Dylan Thomas said:

“Do not go gentle into that good night, 
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

He didn’t say, “Pretend you’re still a teenager because you have nothing else.”  One Finger for Sisters.