Life of the Party (Review)
Life of the Party is About as Much Fun as Watching a Sex Scene with Mom.
Mother’s Day is coming up and so it makes sense that Life of the Party would be the perfect movie for audiences to take their moms to in order to celebrate. However, it’s about as much fun as discovering a surprise sex scene in a film you’re watching and sitting awkwardly through it with your mother. The film doesn’t so much have a plot as it’s more an excuse to showcase a number of quirky jokes that requires contorting characters into awkward positions and circumstances in order to work. Take it from personal experience though, anyone can be awkward, but that doesn’t make them funny.
Melissa McCarthy has become an actress whose films remain consistently inconsistent. She’s had some that she’s knocked out of the park, such as Spy. But more often than not her movies often fall just short of being truly great (and sometimes even just good). In Life of the Party, she plays a caricature of the typical mom. She laughs at bad jokes, wears gaudy clothes, can’t read a room, and is just embarrassing for no reason whatsoever. Her character is going back to college to finish up her senior year and earn her degree. The twist? Well, it just so happens to be her daughter’s senior year as well. It’s a premise that would have made a fun ongoing Saturday Night Live skit, but after nearly two hours of it all I felt was a sickening amount of second-hand shame for most of the characters involved.
As much as McCarthy tries to lead the ensemble cast onwards and upwards in Life of the Party, it was Gillian Jacobs that stole the show. I loved her character in Community, which centered on non-traditional students in college. So, this transition to a character known as “coma girl” who wakes after an 8-year coma to head back to college was a natural progression for her. Honestly, the premise of her character seemed like it would have made for a better movie than Life of the Party. Her sarcastic attitude, optimism, and lingering cognitive impairment was absolutely delightful and managed to keep a number of the scenes afloat. If nothing else, Life of the Party confirmed that Jacobs is an actress we need much, MUCH more of in the future.
Life of the Party continues a pleasant trend we’ve seen in theaters lately with a strong focus on women characters and the twists that they can bring to cliched comedy tropes. Blockers showed the girl perspective of high school with wild and out seniors trying to have the best prom ever to the chagrin of their parents. Thoroughbreds showed that girls can handle the dark buddy comedy just as easily (and perhaps even better) than most guys can. Life of the Party tries to bring that same enlightenment to the college party flick. In a lot of ways, it manages to make it work through the supporting characters. However, McCarthy is a bit too loud and obnoxious throughout the movie to really let it get good enough footing in order to voice its message. That isn’t to say that she isn’t funny at certain parts. The part where she suffers from severe stage fright during an oral presentation was delightful. These scenes though are few and far between.
I’ll admit that the humor that is predominantly used in the film isn’t my cup of tea. I’ve never been a fan of just watching characters consistently embarrass themselves through their journey for no other reason than a few cheap laughs. Life of the Party fails though not because the scenes aren’t funny at times, but because the characters never grow from their embarrassing moments. McCarthy never comes around and undergoes the growth that shows the whole journey and all of its hardships were for the best and made her a better person for it. That’s because she starts off as a good person, just one that makes you incredibly uncomfortable at times. Things would have been so much better if she had gone from a meek and submissive housewife suffering from years of passive aggressive abuse from a dick of an ex-husband to a strong, confident, and independent woman. This transition though happens after a trip to the bathroom and a quick makeover twenty minutes into the film, leaving nothing for the next hour and a half to do but poke around at various cliches.
I’m sure that lots of people are thinking that Life of the Party is a great excuse to take their mom to the theaters this Sunday. Personally, I don’t have the kind of relationship with my mother where I can comfortably laugh at jokes like “va-google” or scenes where a 40 something-year-old repeatedly has sex with a student less than half her age (same goes for male characters in similar situations). It feels too much like Life of the Party has a checklist of college movie tropes that it needed to get through. College rival? Check. Weird roommate? Check. 80’s party? Check. So on and so forth. It’s not the worst comedy I’ve seen this year, but it’s forgettable one at best. You’re better off taking mom to see Infinity War instead this weekend. I’m sure she’ll appreciate the 3-Chris’ much more than any of McCarthy’s jokes.
