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Setting a film’s release date is an imperfect science and sometimes even an art. Just look at a masterpiece like “Barbenheimer.”
While most are open to experimentation to figure out what audiences want and when in the wild west of modern theatrical cinema, there’s also an unwritten rule that it’s best to keep the big superhero movie’s opening weekend away from competition. But whoever thought to open the third-part female buddy comedy “The Fabulous Four” with “Deadpool & Wolverine” deserves a raise. Because if any audience is going to be underestimated in the opening weekend of an oxygen-sucking, violent and self-referential superhero mashup, it’s women over 60.
So, what better way to escape the foul-mouthed businessman than with a trip to Key West with Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Megan Mullally?
Like “80 for Brady” and “Book Club,” “The Fabulous Four” may not be a great movie, but it’s better than it looks. Though it struggles for oomph with food and drink and a parasailing expedition gone wrong, it also has some admirable wit, even if you don’t believe it for a second. It begins, like many movies of this kind, with a somewhat tortured explanation of why these women became friends in their youth. Though it hints at a slight age difference between college classmates Lou and Marilyn and two girls they met in New York, Alice and Kitty, it’s best not to do the math.
Besides, the more interesting question is not why four lonely girls living in the same building became friends, but how they maintained that closeness over the decades. This larger life mystery is mostly ignored, focusing instead on the 40-year separation between Lou and Marilyn. This is a play in which Alice and Kitty are still entangled, for reasons completely incomprehensible.
Recently widowed Marilyn is engaged and wants Lou to attend her wedding. Alice and Kitty lure Lou to Key West under false pretenses, telling him he has won a polydactyl cat and can visit the Hemingway house. They have nothing grander to this lie. It seems their plan is simply to surprise their unwitting hostage by visiting Marilyn’s house. This seems noble at best but becomes cruel when the reason is finally revealed. Why interfere now?
The film was directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, the Australian filmmaker who has made such fine and diverse female-centric films as “How to Make an American Quilt,” “The Dressmaker” and “Muriel’s Wedding,” and written by Jenna Milly and Ann Marie Allison. And it never fully coheres. These characters, no matter how wonderful they are individually or on paper, are somehow not better together.
As Marilyn and Lou dance around this ancient feud, you start to feel bad for Alice and Kitty, who would have so much fun leaving them and going on their own adventures. Midler plays Marilyn so broad and broad that she seems more parody than person, though there’s an intrigue even in a 70-something who gets engaged two months after her beloved husband’s death and becomes obsessed with making TikToks. Sarandon’s Lou is the most thoughtfully developed character, as a rule-following woman whose life is in desperate need of a jolt. She has some awkward moments, but also many charming flirtations with the bachelors of Key West.
This is a movie that probably should have focused less on wild low-margin pranks and more on the little moments of being friends for 40 years. But it’s not without its charms. I don’t disagree that they suddenly start singing. That kind of break from reality, especially with this cast, is always welcome.
Bleecker Street’s film “The Fabulous Four,” which opens in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “drug use, some sexual content, language.” Film length: 98 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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