Little vigor in Life of the Party

Melissa McCarthy in Life of the Party. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

It’s incredibly perplexing watching Melissa McCarthy the writer completely fail Melissa McCarthy the actress in Life of the Party. McCarthy as an actress can be a gifted performer, capable of injecting excitement into weak material while delivering some quality pratfalls. McCarthy the writer is the type of person who gives herself terrible material to work from. It’s the great struggle of Life of the Party, watching McCarthy battle McCarthy to win the viewer’s hearts and minds. For the most part, McCarthy the actress rarely wins. To be fair, McCarthy shares screenwriting credit with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directs the film. (At the least, Life of the Party is a family affair.) Together, they have written a bland, often uninteresting comedy with just a glimmer of interesting concepts. 

 

Life of the Party is about as basic as a college movie can get, with McCarthy’s newly divorced mom deciding to enroll at the same college as her daughter (Molly Gordon) to finish her degree. The premise has worked before with Rodney Dangerfield in McCarthy's role, although Dangerfield had the advantage of a random, brilliant cameo by Kurt Vonnegut. McCarthy has Christina Aguilera, which is not an upgrade. That the movie doesn’t really do anything interesting with this idea is not surprising. But the premise isn’t what ultimately fails Life of the Party. Rather, it's an exposition heavy script littered with plot holes and some pretty weak jokes.

Exposition is pretty much the only reason the audience knows what is going on at any given moment. Some exposition is fine and necessary, but Life of the Party overloads on it, using asinine statements to reflect the passage of time and character status. Aside being a sign of some very bad writing, it also reflects an absence of creativity from McCarthy and Falcone, who have an entire college campus and a myriad of methods (signs, events, holidays) to indicate the passage of time. Good movies don’t state that it’s Tuesday, they show it.

Even with all the exposition Life of the Party is still a conundrum. This is one of those “why” movies in which a person throws their hands in the air and asks why something is at it is. The characters don’t make bad decisions as much as they make bizarre and awkward ones, doing things few rationale humans would opt to do. And the exposition the film clutches too even refutes some of the action shown on screen. There's a whole speech in which Gordon rants at her mom for not taking college seriously enough, despite the movie going out of its way to show McCarthy as an excellent student. That rant by Gordon's character is part of a poorly represented character arc between her and McCarthy, one of the many little stories the movie picks up and either drops or tells poorly. Gordon’s story is the most egregious, given how quickly she goes from loathing her mom’s presence on campus to embracing it before hating it again. Nothing is really earned in this movie; it’s just there.

Life of the Party is not a good or even particularly mediocre movie, but it isn't an abject failure either. A couple of jokes land in interesting enough places to earn a chuckle or two. Maya Rudolph and Stephen Root are both treasures, with Rudolph earning the biggest laughs of the movie by just being herself. And running just behind the background of McCarthy's flat shenanigans is a way more interesting movie starring Gillian Jacobs and Heidi Gardner. Their one brief interaction has the weirdest vibe to it, and each character is weird enough to belong to a moderately twisted dark comedy that wrings laughs out of their respective kookiness. It could be either a mark of Jacobs and Gardner taking what they had and running with it, or perhaps a sign that Falcone and McCarthy have a hidden, weird sense of humor just waiting to come out.

Alas, the oddities are left behind a mundane and uninteresting movie about self-discovery, one in which McCarthy has to undergo a makeover to find social validation. Life of the Party fleetingly allows its characters to be unique and fun, only to put on the brakes and go back to some boring, poorly developed point. For all the effort McCarthy clearly puts into her performance, she constantly shoots herself in the foot with poor dialog and jokes that meander to nowhere. McCarthy just doesn’t isn’t a talented enough writer to write for herself.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 105 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away
Target audience: Fans of Melissa McCarthy.

Take the whole family?: The content gets a skosh risque for young kids. And, really, this isn't interesting enough for them anyway.

Theater or Netflix?: Just wait for a streaming option if you want to see it.

How is Ben Falcone as a director?: Based on this film not good in the least. Falcone's style lacks individuality or personality, along with any interest in using the camera to tell a joke. Falcone seems to prefer to point the camera and let things happen, which is a terrible way to direct a comedy.

Watch this instead?: Back to School isn’t the greatest film, but Rodney Dangerfield sells the heck out of that material. The best option is to watch the classic Simpsons episode Homer Goes to College.