Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (3/5 Stars)

 

I guess I should be happy that this movie exists at all. In 2011, the creative team of Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo made their spectacular debut with Bridesmaids. That movie was written by both Wiig and Mumolo, though only Wiig had a major acting role (Mumolo has a cameo on a plane). One would think that the critical and financial success of Bridesmaids would have resulted in a second movie in less than a decade’s time. It did not for reasons unknown to me, hopefully having to do with the team following different ambitions. They seem to have been plenty busy with other projects.

But here finally is Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, which really wants you to have a good old-fashioned time. It stars two cheery best friends as main characters that take a vacation to the bright sunny and colorful paradise which is Vista Del Mar, Florida. The main conflict in the story is provided by an albino super villain named Sharon Gordon Fisherman who stalks a secret lair and has plans to murder the entire town at the local Seafood Jam festival.

There are plenty of good-natured jokes here and several up-tempo musical numbers, but something is lacking that ought to give the movie much needed weight. For instance, I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a satire, and if so, of what. First, are Barb and Star supposed to be a caricature of a recognizable type of person. I mean, they are supposedly middle-aged woman from middle America, but do people there actually have the broad characteristics of these stereotypes. Because it kind of just feels like Wiig and Mumolo enjoy speaking in their funny voices. The jokes don’t seem to be really connected with the characters. Unless middle aged woman from Nebraska really do love cullotes and Tommy Bahama to an absurd degree. But do they?

Also Vista Del Mar? That’s a real place right? I looked it up, but it does not appear to be anything like the fancy hotel and resort paradise that is in this movie. So is this Vista Del Mar a satirized version of some other place like in Miami or Mexico. Or is it just a funny sounding name that rhymes with Barb and Star?

Then there is the supervillain plot. What this seems to resemble is a Dr. Evil from Austin Powers sort of situation which itself was a satire of 1960s James Bond movies. But Barb and Star aren’t spies with secret missions and the supervillain does not have any geopolitical aspirations. Barb and Star are just screwball middle-aged woman who are on vacation and the supervillain just wants to kill everyone. Really, if there was one thing I would change about the plot is that I would make the supervillain plot less extremely serious and fatal. I think it would have been better as something serious but less fatal, like a oil spill on the beach, or something just ridiculous, like letting loose a skunk spray on the crowd in the Seafood Jam. Ruining the party would have had the same dramatic weight as the murdering everyone plan in this scenario.

There is certain level of absurdity that the audience can take before things get a little too absurd and then the movie starts losing its sense of reality. That level is achieved within the first scene of Barb and Star when a seemingly innocuous and overweight Asian child with an affinity for 80s pop songs turns out to be an evil henchman named Yoyo to the above-mentioned nefarious plot. The scene is funny but it would have been funnier if it made any or would make any logical sense.

The pleasures of Barb & Star are shallow and do not last, but that is not to say that the pleasures do not exist. After all, it is pleasurable to be in the company of two cheery comedians with funny voices in a bright vibrant place. Children under five may love this movie for its overall feel. Wiig and Mumolo are also correct in their suspicion that it would be pleasurable, on the surface at least, to have a handsome man, Jamie Dornan here from 50 Shades of Grey fame, demean himself by singing musical numbers while half-naked and prancing in the sand. It reminded me of the same type of performance that Chris Hemsworth gave in the Ghostbusters reboot a few years back. I suspect women and gay men would get a bigger kick out of that than I do. I only wish the movies could make hot women do that in mainstream movies. They used to.

Finally, there is Darlie Bunkle, a man who repeatedly attempts to get the attention of Jamie Dornan. There is a repeated joke that he is trying to be surreptitious but keeps giving away his name, general identity, and place of residence, though I could never figure out what organization he was supposed to be representing or what he wanted to accomplish. Anyway, I mention him because so many variations of a theme are made on his joke that it becomes blaringly obvious the joke that is left on the fence untold. They missed the joke where Darlie Bunkle is trying to blend into the crowd but can’t because he’s the only black person on the beach/in the hotel/in the town/in the movie. Am I wrong?