Sisters





Directed By: Jason Moore

Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, Maya Rudolph, James Brolin, and Dianne Wiest

Few films have dared to open against Star Wars: The Force Awakens for good reason.  The force is strong with this seventh installment in the famed science fiction franchise.  Wildly popular, it's breaking every box office record that there is to break.  Right now, the sky's the limit for Star Wars.  One movie that dared to dance with box office disaster is raunchy party movie Sisters.  It's a bold gambit by any measure.  At the same time, it's quite a clever move.  Outside of Alvin and the Chipmunks, it's the only new counterprogramming at the mainstream box office against the ultimate blockbuster.  In other words, it's the only other adult programming.  I've got to respect the hustle.
 
Having partied away for decades, Kate Ellis (Tina Fey) is just now hitting rock bottom.  Unemployed and doing hair out of a friend’s apartment, she’s driven her daughter Haley (Madison Davenport) to live elsewhere.  As a mother, it tears Kate up to not be able to see Haley.  To make matters worse, she’s being thrown out of her friend’s apartment and has nowhere to go.  While financially stable, Kate’s sister Maura (Amy Poehler) isn’t faring much better than her.  Divorced and with no prospect of having children, Maura spends most of her time doing volunteer work or pestering her parents Bucky and Deana (James Brolin & Dianne Wiest).  Maura is distressed to learn that her parents are selling her childhood home in Orlando and that she has to come with her sister Kate to clean out her old room.
 
Returning to Orlando to revisit the memories of their youth one last time, Kate and Maura have a grand old time clearing out their once treasured possessions.  They run into old high school classmates like Dave (John Leguizamo) and Alex (Bobby Moynihan).  As they look at this time capsule of their lives, Kate and Maura decide to live it up like they're young one more time in their old home.  Despite the looming sale and the fact that the new owners are visiting regularly, the two sisters opt to throw an "Ellis Island Party" like they did in the past.  They invite all their old classmates, save for Kate's former nemesis Brinda (Maya Rudolph).  Buying plenty of liquor and even an assortment of drugs from Pazuzu (John Cena), they get things right for the epic party to come.  Unfortunately, all their old friends are now actually old, and they learn this the hard way once the festivities get started. To remedy this, they do the apple butt dance and a lot of other crazy shenanigans.

Sisters is exactly the kind of counterprogramming that can thrive in the shadow of The Force Awakens.  Raunchy, amusing, and even family-themed at times, the Jason Moore comedy is a thoroughly entertaining vehicle for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler that is sure to find its niche at the box office this holiday season.  All that being said, Sisters is far from perfect.  At times trying too hard to be funny, Fey and Poehler's flat jokes fall on deaf ears.  It's probably due to the fact that they inundate moviegoers with jokes all about old age.  With this in mind, the comedy in the film is a bit uneven.  In fact, I'd argue that it impacts the earlier parts of the film to the extent that the first act of the film is substantially weaker than the second act.  Still, Sisters finds its funny bone in time.

With their unique brands of humor, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler certainly deliver enjoyable performances as siblings Kate and Maura Ellis, but the real gems of Sisters are the supporting players who shine time and time again throughout the movie delivering loads of laughs.  James Brolin and Dianne Wiest, for instance, deliver hilarious performances as the sisters’ senior citizen parents getting their groove back.  They bring plenty of caustic wit as the realists of the film.  John Cena is also funny as Pazuzu.  Letting us know all his safe words, he consistently delivers more than a drug high.  Finally, we have Bobby Moynihan as the crazy Alex.  He may be dead to me with his purposefully bad jokes early in the film, but he becomes the life of the party once he gets some Cloud 10 in his system, especially when Greta Lee's Hae-Won is in the building.

Sisters gets a strong 0.06% rating.  It's a fun romp that delivers a decent counterpunch of laughter to Star Wars and more serious awards season fare at the box office.  Have a few glasses of Pinot Noir with this one.