Thank the movie gods that after a drought we finally have a superhero movie this week. No, not the kind in which a spandex-clad manchild delivers faux-ironic schmuck humor, but the kind that assembles a group of seniors who happen to be (or become) friends. In these comedies, they become nursing-home cheerleaders, or go to the Super Bowl, or pretend to read 50 Shades of Grey. This time, they set out to get married and get high in South Florida.
The friendship at the heart of The Fabulous Four spans decades, with Bette Midler’s impulsive Marilyn as its chaotic center, for better and worse. Fresh off the death of one husband, Marilyn is ready to marry again, and summons her friends in Key West for a bachelorette celebration days before the rushed ceremony. But she and Lou (Susan Sarandon) are deeply estranged, leaving the misbehaving Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Alice (Megan Mullally) to find a way to maneuver Lou onto a plane to Florida.
As you might expect, it’s Marilyn’s deceased husband who plays a role in her and Lou’s bad blood. And the road to their reconciliation is also what you might expect, with Lou’s moments of public embarrassment and reclaimed inner fun arriving right on schedule.
You can’t blame the film for knowing its audience and playing directly to it. This is, after all, a movie that finds humor in Midler’s inability to figure out how to control her pool jets from her iPad. Shoehorned in is a gay-grandson subplot, a group of partying college kids following the foursome around, and a musical sequence purely for the hell of it. It gives us the kind of frivolous good time we want (and one less self-congratulatory than other comedies you might see in theaters right now). The Fabulous Four knows exactly the movie it is, and it’s easy to really enjoy yourself. Even so, you want it to be a little more.
A still from The Fabulous Four
Photo by Bleecker Street MediaThough this ensemble isn’t cast exactly as expected—Sarandon is the square, Ralph is the go-between, Mullally is the horny pothead, and Midler is the mess—the broad characterization afforded them keeps this from being a more affecting portrait of female friendship. Unlike their antics, the foursome and their struggles are a little too neat and tidy, too confined by the basic boxes they are placed in. While Sarandon is as delightfully light-on-her-feet as she always is in comedies, it’s Ralph who gets best-in-show honors, deftly juggling the film’s varied comic tones with the character least reduced to an archetype.
That satisfaction with bareboned results is doubly true for the film’s glaring production values. The film can’t escape a cheap-looking, done-on-the-fly feel, accidentally presenting itself like it was the keystone of some kind of MLM. While you could take its substandard green-screen shots as part of its unpretentious charm, the haphazardness of the aesthetics only add to the sense of cutting valuable corners. Fun times don’t have to look so cheap.
Not that any lack of ambition stops it from landing a laugh. On The Fabulous Four’s side is that it consistently manages some harder-hitting laughs than its comparatively mild-mannered contemporaries. While sometimes its raunchiness feels a touch put-on, the film’s dirty mind does set it apart somewhat from its genteel brethren. (A multi-scene arc involving a kegel ball proves to be one of its most comically versatile bits.) Also, no other movie has been as determined to affirm that our parents and grandparents love weed even more than we do; marijuana should basically be given an “and” starring credit on the poster.
Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, who delivered such starry female-centric films as The Dressmaker and How to Make an American Quilt, the film gets by on the confidence of a pleasingly familiar formula. By now, this type of film runs like a machine. But Four devotes all of its gas to making you laugh, and less than it should to the kind of character depth that makes for a frequently revisited new classic. The result is a film capturing the disposition of its sunny Key West setting: effervescent, if forgivably tacky, disposable, and, yes, still a little fabulous.
