Audio By Carbonatix
What’s quietly revolutionary about Sisters is that it’s a dumb party movie like a million others. The hosts score booze, invite over dozens of friends and frenemies, and then watch in horror — and a touch of self-congratualtory awe — as their house gets trashed. With the sunrise comes lessons, hugs and a hell of a hangover. We’ve seen this movie starring all ages, all social classes, and with every backdrop from high school to college to weddings to Armageddon.
What we haven’t seen is a dumb party movie starring two middle-aged women, or, as one of those women, Kate (Tina Fey), puts it, “two dusty old twats.” When her younger sister Maura (Amy Poehler) breaks the news that their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) are selling their childhood home, the two revisit the Orlando McMansion of their youth to pack up their bedrooms and throw one last rager — that is, if any of their old pals can get babysitters.
If you’ve ever seen a dumb party movie, you can predict what happens next. Once the drugs and booze start flowing, the evening is a mess: There will be fights, dancing and destruction, and probably foam from the ceiling. Yes, suds and secrets spill all over the house. Fey and Poehler even divide into typical archetypes. Fey’s Kate is the unhinged, oversexed loon, while Poehler’s Maura has the self-sacrificial prudery of a kid who spent her life cleaning up after her older sister’s wreckage.
During the film’s first third, you might get restless as director Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) establishes their wearily predictable dynamic. It’s tired stuff, but after two decades of friendship, Fey and Poehler know how to sell their characters’ bond. These stars share a comfortable shorthand that we see in the way they touch each other’s hair and communicate with quick glances.
Poehler may be the best straightwoman of her generation. She specializes in characters with clueless empathy, go-getter types who so exhaust themselves trying to please it’s as though they’re aliens from outer space sincerely aiming to fit in.
Fey’s wastrel single mom is too thinly sketched to keep pace, but the film is packed with so many supporting characters that this isn’t fatal. John Cena is perfection as a taciturn drug dealer, Maya Rudolph plays the bitter mean girl determined to sabotage the sisters’ big night, John Leguizamo is an aging rager whom Fey describes as “under-the-underpass weathered,” Greta Lee is great as a wild manicurist, and Bobby Moynihan, the “that guy” of the party — the one who shows up first, yells loudest, entertains no one — is a one-man hurricane who gathers energy as the night goes on.
Once the bash really gets going, I was swept up in the chaos and happily clicked off my brain. Screenwriter Paula Pell classes up the dumb stuff with a touch of depth — these revelers, mature-ish people with mortgages and children, savor this night because, as Poehler yelps, “We know we could die tomorrow!”
Make no mistake: Sisters isn’t a brilliant comedy. But it doesn’t have to be. Even the better dumb party movies are ranked somewhere between mediocre and pretty good. So, sure, pour me a red Solo cup of Poehler and Fey dancing to Snow’s “Informer.” In fact, I’ll have another.
