B- | Two close friends seek romance and adventure on the Florida coast. Directed by Joshua Greenbaum Starring Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumolo, and Jamie Dornan Review by Jon Kissel |
There’s something about a long name that is a sign of quality in comedies. The Will Ferrell/Adam McKay subtitles, Borat’s broken English, Dr. Strangelove, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stoppin’ have a new member of their club in Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar, the best comedy since Popstar. This is a film laden with nonstop jokes, a parade of absurdity with zero dead spots. Written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, and directed by Josh Greenbaum in his feature debut, Barb and Star might not work for everyone, but it certainly worked for me.
Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) go the Zoolander route for protagonist personalities, as in they inhabit a heightened world and travel through it as good-hearted dunces. Their only goals in life are to spend as much time together as possible, at least until they hear of Vista Del Mar, a magical land full of Tommy Bahama-clad men and CVS pharmacies that never close. After a job loss and an exile from their Talking Club, the cautious Star convinces more cautious Barb to break out of their bubble and see the world, namely a tourist trap region of the Florida coast. Hijinks ensue as the two culotte-clad ladies compete, perhaps for the first time in their relationship, over the affections of Edgar (Jamie Dornan), an assassin sent by albino villain Sharon Fisherman (also Wiig). Fisherman and her doughy tween sidekick Yoyo (Reyn Doi) are set to take revenge on Vista Del Mar for an earlier humiliation, provided that Edgar can stay focused on his task and avoid distractions like a pair of middle-aged, culotte-clad beauties who could model for CostCo’s Kirkland line.
Barb and Star’s particular brand of anarchic, non sequiter comedy is exactly the kind that I can’t get enough of. This is Conan random nonsense plus Lonely Island musical interludes with the non-nightmare parts of Tim and Eric. I can’t believe Wiig and Mumolo had this in them. Their previous collaboration in Bridesmaids is an Apatow-esque character study with diarrhea jokes, a film that has exactly zero talking crabs. Mumolo’s other feature writing credits include Megan Leavey and Joy, films that oscillate between unimaginative and dreadful, while Wiig has taken a turn for the dramatic, working with directors like Darren Aronofsky and Ridley Scott. Greenbaum comes from documentaries and TV sitcom directing. The writing process for Barb and Star must have been an anything-goes attempt to see what Wiig and Mumolo can get away with.
It turns out they can get away with everything. The viewer doesn’t need to know Fisherman’s recipe for a soda fountain suicide, but time is carved out for it. The Trish back-and-forth is likely an improv between Wiig and Mumolo, and I could’ve listened to another five minutes of it. The aforementioned talking crab adds nothing but the building gag of it speaking in a Morgan Freeman voice before introducing itself as Morgan Freemond. That’s a deleted scene if ever there was one, but it makes it into the film here. Directorial choices are just as out there, ranging from the seagull wipe after Edgar’s big power ballad to the several sudden cuts back to the tense Talking Club during action sequences. The TV version of this would air from 12:48 to 1:00 in the morning on Adult Swim.
Every one of those idiosyncratic choices got a laugh out of me. Barb and Star has perfect jokes in it, jokes whose format is recognizable from other comedies but that feel like the best version. The book gag, where Edgar is reading something suited specifically for his scenario, is frequently used in American Dad but they never had the opposite scenario described on the back cover and then flipped it later. Old School and The Hangover had the weird background band, but the collected works of lounge pianist Richard Cheese in Barb and Star put those guys to shame. Even something as simple as Barb and Star ordering lunch at the hotel pool is expertly crafted, a joke that’s not only funny but satirical in how fantasy is more real for these two than reality and also an apt description of this tacky location and the country that it sits in. That’s as deep as Barb and Star gets but who needs profundity when I’ve got sock talk.
This was a joyful experience. Everyone is so committed to their ridiculous tasks in Barb and Star, from a revelatory Dornan to Damon Wayans Jr as Darlie Bunkle, a spy who can’t stop revealing details about himself. I would never be able to convince a person that didn’t care for this that it was in fact comedic genius. Nothing’s more subjective in cinema than comedy, and there’s nothing more reductive in film criticism than whether something that only exists to make the viewer laugh succeeds or fails. By making the strangest and wackiest choice again and again, Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar wildly succeeds, if only for me. A-
Barb and Star’s particular brand of anarchic, non sequiter comedy is exactly the kind that I can’t get enough of. This is Conan random nonsense plus Lonely Island musical interludes with the non-nightmare parts of Tim and Eric. I can’t believe Wiig and Mumolo had this in them. Their previous collaboration in Bridesmaids is an Apatow-esque character study with diarrhea jokes, a film that has exactly zero talking crabs. Mumolo’s other feature writing credits include Megan Leavey and Joy, films that oscillate between unimaginative and dreadful, while Wiig has taken a turn for the dramatic, working with directors like Darren Aronofsky and Ridley Scott. Greenbaum comes from documentaries and TV sitcom directing. The writing process for Barb and Star must have been an anything-goes attempt to see what Wiig and Mumolo can get away with.
It turns out they can get away with everything. The viewer doesn’t need to know Fisherman’s recipe for a soda fountain suicide, but time is carved out for it. The Trish back-and-forth is likely an improv between Wiig and Mumolo, and I could’ve listened to another five minutes of it. The aforementioned talking crab adds nothing but the building gag of it speaking in a Morgan Freeman voice before introducing itself as Morgan Freemond. That’s a deleted scene if ever there was one, but it makes it into the film here. Directorial choices are just as out there, ranging from the seagull wipe after Edgar’s big power ballad to the several sudden cuts back to the tense Talking Club during action sequences. The TV version of this would air from 12:48 to 1:00 in the morning on Adult Swim.
Every one of those idiosyncratic choices got a laugh out of me. Barb and Star has perfect jokes in it, jokes whose format is recognizable from other comedies but that feel like the best version. The book gag, where Edgar is reading something suited specifically for his scenario, is frequently used in American Dad but they never had the opposite scenario described on the back cover and then flipped it later. Old School and The Hangover had the weird background band, but the collected works of lounge pianist Richard Cheese in Barb and Star put those guys to shame. Even something as simple as Barb and Star ordering lunch at the hotel pool is expertly crafted, a joke that’s not only funny but satirical in how fantasy is more real for these two than reality and also an apt description of this tacky location and the country that it sits in. That’s as deep as Barb and Star gets but who needs profundity when I’ve got sock talk.
This was a joyful experience. Everyone is so committed to their ridiculous tasks in Barb and Star, from a revelatory Dornan to Damon Wayans Jr as Darlie Bunkle, a spy who can’t stop revealing details about himself. I would never be able to convince a person that didn’t care for this that it was in fact comedic genius. Nothing’s more subjective in cinema than comedy, and there’s nothing more reductive in film criticism than whether something that only exists to make the viewer laugh succeeds or fails. By making the strangest and wackiest choice again and again, Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar wildly succeeds, if only for me. A-
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