The latest in a long lineage of subpar comedies about old folks getting the band back together designed to be slept through during a long flight back from Boca, The Fabulous Four strands a perfectly assembled cast in a wheezy, hackneyed story with only a handful of chuckles to be found. Contrived in the extreme and narratively bankrupt, The Fabulous Four tries to fit a tiresome formulaic template, but fails to include even the slightest shred of originality or wit. It aims low and lands even lower.
Marilyn (Bette Midler), a Tik-Tok obsessed recent widower and transplant to Key West, is rushing into a new marriage, and she wants all her best friends from college to come down for the celebration. Wild-child singer Alice (Megan Mullally) and organic marijuana farmer Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) are all on board, but convincing the other member of their estranged crew, esteemed surgeon Lou (Susan Sarandon), to join them is easier said than done. After Marilyn stole and subsequently married the love of Lou’s life decades earlier, an unbridgeable rift has occurred between the two of them. Kitty and Alice dupe Lou into coming by playing into her sympathies as a single cat-lady (seriously), and “hijinks” ensue.
The premise from writers Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly is as basic as it is tired; a set of dance steps that won’t tax the cast of seasoned pros all that much. The direction from the usually much more interesting Jocelyn Moorhouse (How to Make an American Quilt, The Dressmaker, co-writer of Muriel’s Wedding) is about as exciting as watching someone’s vacation videos, and just as joyless for the person having to sit through them. The Fabulous Four doesn’t just start from a deficit. It starts from almost nothing. Scenes are strung together arbitrarily, with little to no care if any of it makes logical or emotional sense, so long as the give-and-take between the cast members is good. But when they’re tasked with doing the same old jokes about aging people (what if they get really wasted?, why are they so bad with technology?, what about their sex lives?, what’s up with kids today?), it doesn’t matter who is on screen. The results will often be just as dire.
Comedy is about timing, and in that respect each of the cast members is able to wring a couple of sudden snorts and laughs from the audience through sheer instinct, with Mullally and Sarandon faring best. But this stacked cast also brings with it a load of other issues. First, none of them credibly feel like they’re actually friends, but rather actors with minimal time to build real chemistry thrown together on a whim for the sake of popping the box office. Second, the obvious age differences between the four stars makes it hard to believe they’re lifelong besties that went to school together. Midler and Sarandon are about the same age, but one of them has aged far more gracefully than the other. Ralph, the next in line in terms of age, is clearly (and in reality) a full decade younger than Sarandon and Midler, but she’s saddled with the film’s worst subplot, revolving around Kitty’s devout (possibly cult following) daughter (Brandee Evans) wanting to ship her off to an assisted living facility.
Then there’s Mullally, the biggest shining star of the bunch and curiously the one cast member who keeps appearing and disappearing from the film, probably due to previous scheduling considerations. There’s a way to cut around this by simply painting Alice as sexually irrepressible, but that feels like a crutch at many points. Mullally is already the youngest cast member, and the filmmakers make the odd decision to put her under a ton of make up to make her look like a woman trying to appear younger than she actually is. What is the joke in making your already youngest looking cast member look even younger and more out of place than everyone around her?
The women in front of and behind the camera are unquestionably legendary talents, but what would drive any of them to do something as leadenly obvious and unfunny as The Fabulous Four, a cynical exercise that fleeces old people of their ticket money as much as major blockbusters grift teenagers and poorly made family flicks grease children and parents. Throw in some awful pacing, abysmal editing, twists that can be seen from galaxies away (Bruce Greenwood? What are you doing here?!?), and an insistence that the sympathetic Lou needs to forgive an unrepentant former friend that did her dirty years ago, and The Fabulous Four emerges as one of the most dire films of the summer movie season. The intended audience for The Fabulous Four deserves so much better than this, as do all of the film’s legendary leads.
The Fabulous Four opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, July 26, 2024.
