Kristen Wiig’s vacation comedy Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar is a silly, delightful trip
Film Reviews Kristen Wiig
Comedians in middle age are not supposed to make movies like Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar. Kristen Wiig, the film’s star, producer, and co-writer, is around the age that fellow SNL luminaries like Will Ferrell, Mike Myers, and Eddie Murphy were when they decided to dip into more family-oriented comedies, try out more serious roles, and/or step back from the grind of superstar brand maintenance. Wiig, meanwhile, nearly a decade removed from her breakout hit Bridesmaids, has reunited with that film’s co-writer, Annie Mumolo, for something gloriously, exuberantly silly. Barb & Star throws into sharp relief just how infrequently a major comedy star makes a gag-heavy free-for-all that actually works. Wiig even takes on a makeup-heavy second role that recalls both Murphy and Myers—particularly the latter, as she essentially plays her own Sia-resembling version of Dr. Evil.
Not that Barb (Mumolo, also co-starring) or Star (Wiig) are aware of any archnemesis for most of the film’s run time. As a comic duo, they’re sort of a middle-aged Nebraskan version of Dumb And Dumber’s Harry and Lloyd or Beavis and Butt-Head—less because of their intelligence levels (they’re more daftly oblivious than stupid) than their soulmate-level shared sensibility. Though the movie gradually teases out a few key differences—Barb is a widow while Star is a divorcé; Barb is more fearful of new experiences; they each use a slightly different pronunciation of “caramel” despite their midwestern accents—these women live together, work together, and seem to spend nearly every other waking moment together. They share an enthusiasm for poofy mom haircuts, “full jewelry,” and culottes, among other signifiers for (caricatured) women of a certain age and socioeconomic position.
So when they both lose their jobs and are booted from their only social outlet—a “talking club” led by the tyrannical Debbie (Vanessa Bayer)—Barb and Star decide to go away together on vacation. Barb needs a little prodding, but Star is ready to see the ocean for the first time in Vista Del Mar, Florida, a paradise of hot colors and seashell-themed trinkets. Their modest plans for a week away are thrown off by a chance meeting with Edgar (Jamie Dornan), a handsome young man enmeshed in a mass-murder plot engineered by a mysterious woman (Wiig again) who operates out of what could pass for a lair in a Spy Kids installment. (Again: This movie is very silly.)
It’s a flash of casting genius, making Christian Grey himself the impetus for the lead characters’ lusty reawakening, like a Book Club subplot on a mild form of hallucinogens. At one point, Dornan is in something like a love triangle of Wiigs, and his straight-faced commitment to this ridiculous character makes some already amusing material absolutely sing, occasionally literally. The emotional stuntedness that made Fifty Shades Of Grey so laughable here gets played for actual laughs.
The Fifty Shades connection goes uncommented upon in the movie itself, illustrating the restraint utilized by Wiig, Mumolo, and director Josh Greenbaum. Granted, “restraint” may seem like a strange word for a movie whose tenuous reality is flexible enough to accommodate people being shot out of cannons and a submarine piloted by a prepubescent boy. In this context, it means that Barb & Star trusts its gags to fly by without spinning them out into tedious bits. This is particularly true of its loopy sight gags. Remember sight gags? Funny things comedy audiences were once expected to look at, find funny, and move on from, without belabored dialogue explaining it to the cheap seats? Greenbaum has an eye for them, which is probably why this studio comedy never feels like it’s been ruthlessly carved up from a series of listless improvisations and other stalling tactics.
To be clear, some of the intended laughs don’t land, and occasionally the movie gets a little poky. Specifically, a few stray moments feel like non sequiturs or in-jokes inexplicably sent up to the big leagues because Wiig and Mumolo had too much fun writing them. Yet this kitschy, weirdo movie has such a bizarre clarity of vision about what it wants to do that a few biffed jokes are almost part of its charm, like its sketch-comedy accents and intentional defiance of logic.
At the center is Wiig, who feels free in a way she rarely has before on movie screens—often seemingly by design, given how often she’s opted for supporting parts or indie dramedies over big marquee vehicles. Maybe that was useful training for Star, a woman who comes to realize just how hard she’s been fighting back midlife malaise. The disappointment and yearning Wiig taps into here isn’t as raw as the thirtysomething blues of Bridesmaids, and obviously she hasn’t really spent the past decade sharing a modest home in Nebraska with her best friend. But there’s still a sun-cracked authenticity to the movie’s day-glo day-seizing, as if Wiig is herself correcting a regret that she never made her own Austin Powers or Hot Rod. Whatever her reasons for embracing this wackiness, she and Mumolo have made an unapologetic delight.
63 Comments
I am so ready for a movie like this right now!
This review makes it sound waaay better than that trailer I’ve been seeing on FB. It doesn’t even mention the stars.
This review is a relief after that trailer.I’m looking forward to checking it out now, and can’t say the trailer did that for me.
It’s weird that trailer was so crappy, because as Jesse said in one of the comments upthread this thing is $20 to rent on Amazon, which is a pricing scheme that leads a lot of people to skip over.You’d think that they’d be trying really hard to drum up interest in that case.
That might actually be the problem: they tried too hard.
Trailers for comedies are almost always atrocious, they slice up the jokes into punchlines and (maybe) a setup and stitch them together in a needy, grasping way. HERE ARE SOME LAUGHS! LAUGH WITH US! The only purpose they serve is to tell you that some funny people made an allegedly funny movie. The exceptions actually use what is funny in the movie itself, thinking of how the trailer for The Nice Guys let Gosling in the bathroom stall largely play out. Even that was truncated, but what was there was complete in its rhythm and it got a huge laugh when I saw it in the theater.
I know that the original trailer for Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey was just that scene where they’re falling into hell for so long that they get bored.I think you’re onto something that that’s the right way to do a comedy trailer: just find a minute or two in the movie that’s really funny without context.
I’m ridiculously pleased that this got a good review.
Ronna and Beverly though, right?
Ronna and Beverly though, right?
So.. This is Wiig’s Bubble Boy?Fuckin’ sold.
I haven’t seen Bubble Boy, but if that sells you, I’ll go against my instincts and say “uhhh sure!”
Think of as a more portable version of “Bio-Dome.”
Moops!
The review mentions Hot Rod and that has me very interested, but it better mean that at some point Wiig throws down with the matriarchal version of Ian MacShane (final role of Cloris Leachman?).
Jesse compares it to both Dumb and Dumber and also Hot Rod. That kind of totally committed, off-the-wall insanity is something that very much appeals to me.
oh no, i actually laughed out loud while reading the plot described in the review. i’m a total mark for this shit.
“the tyrannical…Vanessa Bayer!”OK. I have to see this.
For me, it was the line “At one point, Dornan is in something like a love triangle of Wiigs” and I was like, “god, I’m going to pay $20 for this, aren’t I”
never feels like it’s been ruthlessly carved up from a series of listless improvisations…You really nailed it right here.
Funny things comedy audiences were once expected to look at, find funny, and move on from, without belabored dialogue explaining it to the cheap seats?This absolutely *nails* the problem I have with a lot of comedies in recent years. The pacing gets destroyed because the movie wants to linger unnaturally on pointing out its own jokes.
There are several gags in this movie that involve READING and at no point do the characters read those jokes out loud to the audience! That sounds like such a low bar but it’s so refreshing!
I enjoy you, Jesse, but this came off as a weird rant to me. Unrelated to this film, attacking some set of comedies I can’t think of off the top of my head.What are you referring to? Like Andy Samberg movies or somethig?
No, not at all — I actually like just about every movie Samberg has starred in that I can think of! I’m thinking more of the conversational-banter technique that some filmmakers (Apatow, McKay, sometimes Feig) can do really well, but also tends to inform movies like Tag, or Stuber, or lesser Melissa McCarthy vehicles, where characters are allowed to kinda riff and ramble and talk over each other, and then the filmmakers later figure out how to distill it into a comedy-like simulation. I actually love improv in films used well — I think the McKay/Ferrell movies are terrific because McKay has a real feel for the rhythms of these conversations, how to tease them out and let them build within a scene and also weirdly develop the characters. But I’m thinking more of the “uhhh that happened” style of sort of half-assedly riffing around the jokes. I would weirdly liken it to an attempt to make movie comedies play like an episode of New Girl — except New Girl is great, and has characters developed over many episodes with particular hang-ups and personalities.
Is this on any streaming services now?
Amazon and a few others have it to rent. I think it’ll run you twenty bucks, which is a price point I admit I still haven’t 100% gotten used to, but for a theatrical-quality movie with a lot of laughs I’d say is worth it, especially if your household has more than one person.
Was this supposed to be a theatrical release initially? This seems more like it was meant to be VOD. This doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that would have a lot of money at the box office.
It had at least one, maybe two theatrical release dates in the Before Times. I believe it was initially slated for last July. It definitely seems like something that could have bombed at the box office, but much in the same way that MacGruber or Hot Rod did.
Twenty bucks for a rental? That seems . . . high.
I feel like most studios haven’t really landed on a satisfying price point for this stuff yet, but my devil’s advocate position is this: In a big city, a movie ticket runs you $15. For that, one person gets to watch the movie once, at an appointed time. For most $20 rentals, you have access to it at your leisure, for as many times as you want in 24 hours (not that I’ve ever rewatched a rental that fast, but in the ‘90s I did rewatch a few VHS new releases within the same rental period). If you’re a two-person household, that’s $10 each. (And really only a pandemic is keeping a $20 rental from serving 3-5 adults.) As someone who loves movie theaters, I would counter that the “inconvenience” (in the sense of putting on pants and leaving the house and being a place at a certain time) is part of what makes it special—that, and a screen that even in smaller rooms is bigger and more immersive than most “home theaters” (a set-up I don’t really have anyway). So you can’t exactly say “well, you’re paying for a THEATRICAL MOVIE” because part of that $15 is seeing a movie on a big screen, and if the movie never seems like it was intended for theaters (even if it actually was), it’s hard to think of that rental as being equivalent.So, I dunno. My gut feeling is that these new-release VOD rentals (for stuff that would have definitely or probably played as exclusively theatrical releases pre-COVID) should be around… the same price as a movie ticket (which as a New Yorker, is approximately $15… really a bit more, but NYC is crazy). Increased convenience, a potentially good deal for a couple or roommates or a family, but also a less fun/immersive presentation. But of course I’m relieved whenever I want to rent a new release and it’s “only” $8 or whatever.
Yeah, I get the reasoning behind that kind of price, but I wonder how readily a home audience is adjusting to it when that’s been more typically a buy price for streaming. Yeah, that’s for a post-theatrical run movie in the before times, but I’m skeptical that most people are running that rationale through their head when they sit down to watch a movie at home and they’re used to seeing 4-5 bucks as a rental price and now it’s 4-5 times that. I’m mostly just really curious to see some numbers on viewership at those price points. It would take *A LOT* for me to drop 20 on a rental. If I’m willing to spend that much for the convenience of seeing it at home, I’m probably invested enough in that movie to want to own it. Otherwise, I’m perfectly fine waiting a few months for the tag to drop.
What’s your threshold for seeing something theatrically, though? Pricewise, I mean? (And in normal circumstances, where going to the movies seems safe. Not, say, splitting a $150 private rental with a few friends as a treat because you really just wanted to see Tenet. Not that I’d know anything about that…………….)
I’m fine with 20-30 bucks for the full theatrical experience (living in middle America more than 20 per person is pretty rare though). I guess the big thing for me personally is that I only really care about the theatrical experience for big spectacle movies; that 20-some-odd dollars is to see Godzilla stomping across a screen the size of a small house and to get punched in the spleen by Dolby. I’m fine with paying the theater price *for those theater-specific aspects of the experience.*$20 for a rental to me smacks of studios assuming that people are used to paying that much to see a movie in theaters, so they’ll be willing to pay that much to see new movies at home when they can’t go to theaters, and now the studios get to keep all of that $20 (since they’re releasing to streaming services that they themselves own) when before they were splitting it with the theaters. I really suspect that it has little to do with making up losses from the current circumstances and has a lot to do with seizing an opportunity to take advantage of the circumstances to grab for a bigger share.**-like, the whole share I guess
Well, I do think that when they put their movies on Amazon, etc., they don’t get to keep the entire $20. But certainly Amazon will charge a smaller percentage of that $20 than a theater will (and that percentage presumably never changes, whereas most exhibition deals have the theaters getting a greater percentage of the box office as the run increases). So studios are pretty much getting to keep the equivalent of an entire ticket price (figuring whatever they keep of the $20 is at or above the national average ticket), and rather than having, you know, $6 Tuesday or matinees (not much of a factor in NYC, but I’m to understand other places still do this!), the potential discount comes from maybe splitting that rental with someone else. I can definitely see why they’d feel like that all kinda evens out for the consumer, and I can definitely see why the consumer would say, uh, no, this does not even out.
But a lot of people increasingly, I think, share your feeling that the price of a theatrical experience is mainly worth it for Marvel or Godzilla-level events, and MAYBE experential things like a horror film, and definitely not comedies/dramas/etc. So resistance to VOD pricing could really make more explicit that a lot of people think certain types of movies are much more valuable than others, which I guess fair enough if a lot of people do think that way! But I think this could lead to an even wider gap between the blockbuster “haves” and the every-other-type-of-movie have-nots.
(Not that anyone is required to pay $20 for a movie they don’t care about for that reason; it’s just something I’m thinking a lot about lately.)
My mom and I rented Invisible Man when it came out VOD last year and we turned off the lights and popped popcorn and it was a pretty good experience. It wasn’t exactly that of being in a theater, but it was fairly close. We didn’t regret spending $20 on it.I would have regretted spending $20 on WW84, though.
Back at the start of all this, I paid a “premium rental” 19.99 price on CALL OF THE WILD and BLOODSHOT, and again later on BILL & TED, and in each case I was allowed to keep the film. The vast majority of premium items now are strictly rentals, and I struggle with less blockbuster-y films like this and WILLY’S WONDERLAND, where it looks like they might be fun and fill a void, but it still seems steep.
Yeah, there are definitely some that are piggybacking onto the big-studio price point. I liked Willy’s Wonderland well enough (I reviewed it elsewhere), but in pre-COVID times, this would not have been a 2,000-screen release. It would have played on like 100 screens across the country with a day-and-date VOD debut, and that VOD rental would have been $10 or less. (IIRC from my experience watching The Trust and some other VOD cheapies where I would have happily gone to a theater but having a kid at home made the rental attractive.) The Craft sequel was another example of this. MAYBE they would have shoved that into theaters for a quick Halloween cash-in, but it was made very quickly, it was never really on the release calendar as a theatrical play, and it turned out pretty bad. Yet they charged $20 was if it was always intended for theaters; my guess is that they remained pretty flexible about that idea throughout production.
OTOH, again, if you’re sharing this movie-watching with another person, it *is* cheaper than seeing it in a theater. And a $8 rental for two people is pretty major discounting.
Sure, but I live alone, so…I would happily pay $6.99 on Vudu for WW. I succumbed last night and paid for B&S and I have to say, it won me over. Not $20 worth, but I was pleased.
Yep, $19.99… (!?!?!) What is it, a magic movie!? Does it produce some kind of dizzying high?!
This is what the standard price has been for box office movies who got pushed to VOD but aren’t owned by a streaming service.
After skipping WW84, I’m looking forward to seeing Wiig in something good. This is a big contender for date night this weekend.
she was pretty decent in Wonder Woman, but the movie can definitely be skipped.
was completely turned off by the promo but i’ll check this out based on this review. criticism still works, folks!
This seems like a lot of fun, but I’ll wait until it’s on a streamer for “free.”
this movie is DELIGHTFUL and that musical aspect caught me off guard, I’m still recovering
$20 to stream a new movie release from your couch, eh?
Welcome to the world of post-Covid movie distribution. With theaters dark, the major studios are trying to figure out this business model like everyone else. Right now they’re in the “let’s see if we can charge $20″ phase, but you can bet they’ll lower it until they find the magic price point.
Personally, I’d rather have a month of Netflix than Barb & Star, but I’d give it a shot at $10.
I mean, it *seems* like (fingers crossed) theaters will be able to open up more widely (and not just in an ad hoc, if-your-municipality-is-OK-with-it-and-still-no-one-shows-up) by year’s end; they’ve been on this beat for like a year at this point, so if there’s going to be further fluctuation, it will probably be based just as much on the market shifting again. And as long as some studios think (correctly) that they could charge $20-30 for Mulan or (if it does a simultaneous release) Black Widow, I think other studios will be loathe to outright admit “no one wants to see OUR movie that much,” even though it is obviously true.The interesting question to me is if first-run VOD from major studios sticks around, and how it will be positioned against a regular theatrical movie ticket. The pre-COVID assumption was always that they could charge more for an at-home version of a movie that was in theaters; it could be seen by multiple people, they were saving you time and money on transportation (theoretically), etc. But a year of these movies mostly not being available as theatrical releases for a variety of reasons really makes them feel more like video rentals to a lot of people, understandably so. I wonder of the return of theaters (again, fingers crossed) will devalue those, or make them seem like more of a premium.
And those streaming services are priced for volume and buzz, so yeah, sometimes single movies are going to cost more than a month of some of them. My Disney Plus subscription done annually works out to like $7 a month! I don’t expect studios to go fire-sale prices on everything just because their streaming arms have a different model.
You make an interesting point.
In theaters, the shitty movies have always cost the same as the good movies. While we always knew that Chuck & Larry was not going to be worth the same $15 ticket price as Mulan, we paid it anyway because going to the movies was a special occasion we were treating ourselves to.
Now that we have VOD though, I can eagerly pay $20 for a well-reviewed blockbuster release, but I can just as easily say no thank you to a poorly-reviewed piece of trash, because that $20 ticket no longer includes the movie theater experience.
My guess is that they release each movie at the top-tier price (say $20), then lower it slowly over weeks and months until you can grab it for $2, or they license it to a streaming service.
And yes, fingers-crossed that sometime soon we’ll all be back in the theaters. Despite the sticky floors, loud talkers, and expensive candy, there’s simply nothing better than seeing a blockbuster in Dolby Atmos with 150 other geeked-out fans. I’d gladly pay $20 for the privilege.
Even if it’s Chuck & Larry 2.
Even Barb & Star (which is much better than Chuck & Larry but not as spectacular as, you know, a Nolan movie or something), I was watching my screener, wishing I’d seen it with an audience, even though I feel like it would have been 50-50 whether the audience would have gone with it and had a fun time with me, laughing at a lot of it, or sat there stone-faced as I cracked up at a bunch of ridiculous stuff. Either one would have been fun!
I always assumed anyone going to see Chuck & Larry in a theater just wanted to be out of the house on a Friday night. Like suburban teenagers who aren’t cool enough to be invited to parties. You definitely not going to get them to pay to watch it at home.
I always assumed anyone going to see [any Adam Sandler movie] in a theater just wanted to be out of the house on a Friday night.FTFY 🙂
I’ll pay $20 to own a Blu-Ray of a movie, or maybe to see it at a movie theater with a much bigger screen and sound system than I have at home. But $20 to stream it once on my TV? It’ll eventually be available to rent for $4-5 online, or on Blu-Ray at Redbox. At some point it’ll also likely be streaming for no extra charge on a service I already subscribe to, with the same quality as the $20 VOD.The theatrical experience is justifiably more expensive than renting a movie to watch at home. But I can’t imagine wanting to pay extra JUST to see a movie sooner, if I have to watch it on my TV.
This here. I’d love to support this movie, but I’m single and I’m not paying $20 to stream anything, let alone a non-blockbuster film. I’d pay $10 for something I really want to see, particularly in the Age of Covid, but $20 is a few months of a premium streaming channel add-on with a ton more content.
Agreed. But studios will be studios, so they’ll release it at the FOMO price of $20, and you and I will watch it in three months when they drop it to a price that matches our interest level, or in six months when it hits a streaming service. This isn’t too much different than pre-Covid theater releases, frankly. Which, I have decided, shall henceforth be known as “the good old days” so our kids and grandkids can roll their eyes at us in 30 years.
It’s $20 now. Wait a month or two, and it will be $4, or maybe free on some streaming platform.
I’ll wait till the Wiig Comedy is just featured on a streaming service. I used to like her but her part in Wonderwoman 84 was awful. Who ever cast her wasn’t thinking it through. Glad I didn’t have to pay $20 to watch that.
I really enjoyed this movie! I did not know anything about it beyond Wiig being in it… It opens with the prepubescent boy delivering newspapers on bicycle through suburbia, who then bursts into a lip sync of Barbra Streisand’s “Guilty”… I was hooked. The the kid finishes his route and continues on to a huge tree next to a corn field, my expectation was he was going to climb into a tree house or something, then I am exclaiming, “WTF?” I was clearly in the right frame of mind for this insanity.
Also, I have never been a fan of Jamie Dornan. Yes, he is attractive, but I have never been drawn to see something of his because he was in it, in fact, I am not sure I have ever seen anything he has been in. Now I am a fan. His goofiness in this role just made him gorgeous, it was weird how much more attractive he suddenly became.
He’s really good in Synchronic
Wonderfully old school in that it’s more interested in making you laugh than anything else.
The trailer I saw for this was so bad that it looped back around from a hard “no” to actually making me curious about the movie. I remember thinking the trailer for Walk Hard looked dire, and then it ended up being one of my favorite comedy flicks. Maybe there is just a certain kind of movie-length silliness at play that doesn’t lend itself to a 2 minute trailer, and this review mentioning Hot Rod as a point of comparison also seems to point in that direction.
I’ll gladly pay $20 when a movie is as funny as this. I mean this thing has no mission but to make you laugh your ass off. I don’t think I stopped laughing for more than 30 seconds the whole time. This is like her Anchorman.
The wife and I laughed along to the silliness yesterday. While we came in with mitigated expectations and enjoyed it, the accents they don are offensively NOT Nebraskan. Not even South Dakota border county Nebraska close. Those were hard MN/WI accents. I spent a large part of my childhood in NE/SD border county country, and in MN with extended family, and still live in Omaha. For those that have never been to Nebraska, or any plains/midwestern state for that matter, a more accurate locale for that accent is Fantasy TV Parody Land, Wisconsin.
So, I rented it from the Amazonians after it got normal-priced… and I LOVED it, like, I *needed* that gloriously colorful, goofy-ass silliness. And, I check back here to see the AV Club review (which I only barely skim pre-show, coz I’m so anti-spoiler) and **Whoooaa!!!Whaat???** I 100% did not realize that was Wiig as the evil countessa-type!!