Sisters

Sisters is not the best movie we could have gotten out of a pairing of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but it does have some big laughs, and I was entertained.  The material itself is fairly flimsy, and almost seems to have been written with the intent that the two stars would be able to save it.  For the most part, they succeed.  Fey and Poehler have a natural chemistry (no surprise there), and are the sole reason to watch this movie.

As the title suggests, they play sisters who, as the laws of filmmaking suggest, are as different as can be.  Fey's Kate is a former party girl finding it hard to hold down a serious job, and has a teenage daughter (Madison Davenport) who is more mature than she is, and is tired of her mother's reckless ways.  Poehler plays Maura, the straight-laced one of the two who has never cut loose and had fun.  When their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) announce that they are selling the home that the girls grew up in and moving to an upscale retirement community, both Kate and Maura are shocked.  While digging through various childhood relics from the 80s in their old bedrooms, the two sisters decide to throw one last party with all of their old high school friends before the house gets sold to a smarmy couple from New York.  The party serves not only as a chance to have one last blast in their childhood home, but also a chance for Maura to have a romantic encounter with the handsome James (Ike Barinholtz) who lives nearby.  If you can guess that the party gets out of control, and that the house will be almost completely destroyed by the end, you've got all the smarts required to enjoy this.

While we have seen everything that Sisters has to offer many times before, Fey and Poehler are able to give the material enough energy that we don't exactly mind watching it one more time.  In terms of "girls gone bad" comedies, it's not quite as good as Bridesmaids (an obvious inspiration in a lot of the humor), but it's better than some of the pale imitators that movie inspired.  The two stars are even able to add their own hilarious spin on some cliched or expected scenes, such as the scene where they try on party outfits that they are too old to wear, and a shared dance off to early 90s music.  Their energy, chemistry and sharp dialogue that they exchange (which sounds largely improvised) is strong enough to carry the movie, despite the fact there's not a lot going on outside of their performances.

Indeed, what the movie could have used to really push it over the top are some stronger supporting characters.  We have an old high school rival of Kate's (Maya Rudolph), who keeps on attempting to crash and/or sabotage the party, a hulking drug dealer (John Cena) who keeps on looking like he's going to do something really funny but never does, and an obnoxious party animal (Bobby Moynihan) who thinks he's hilarious telling the same bad jokes he probably told when they were kids.  None of the characters outside of the two leads are written to have real personalities, and so they don't earn the same laughs.  The closest the movie comes to a strong supporting character is a Korean manicurist (Greta Lee) that the sisters befriend.  She gets some big laughs early on, but as the movie goes on, the script kind of loses interest and she never lives up to her potential.

This is why Fey and Poehler are so crucial to the film.  Without them, it would just be a lot of warmed over slapstick of adults trashing a house.  They get all the best dialogue, and are obviously having a great time working off each other.  They make this worth watching at least once.  Do I wish they had held out for a better script than this?  Kind of.  But the whole time I was watching it, I was grateful they were there.  It's not just their jokes that work, either.  They both are giving genuinely likable performances, and when the movie does slow down enough for them to get a little serious and develop their characters, they're effective.  This is one of those cases where if the stars were not present, the entire foundation of the film would collapse in on itself.

I would welcome seeing these two women work together again in a movie.  Sisters is a great vehicle for these talented comics.  It's just not that strong of a movie outside of that.

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