Life of the Party (2018)

Life of the Party (2018)

4/10

Starring

Melissa McCarthy

Gillian Jacobs

Maya Rudolph

Julie Bowen

Directed by Ben Falcone

Life of the Party is not that much of a good movie to the point that it will be hard to recommend that you go see it, except you are a Melissa McCarthy fan. Even if you are, this movie didn’t hit home for me in the funny meter until like seventy-five minutes in.

The movie is directed by Ben Falcone and written by Falcone and Melissa McCarthy. It is also the third movie they have worked on together including Tammy (2014) and The Boss (2016). The acting in this movie may have been good, but the story was nowhere near being focused towards entertaining the audience.

Packaged very much like a B-movie whose idea of comedy is misinformed statistics about what people find funny now-a-days, Life of the Party lacked life in itself.

The movie is about a mother and wife, Deanna Miles (Melissa McCarthy) who found out her husband has been having an affair and he is leaving her for his new catch. This happened way early in the movie as I guess the pair writers wanted to focus more on Deanna’s life back in the university rather than she and her husband falling out of love.

The idea of focusing on her life in the university at first seemed like a great idea, until she re-enrolled in her daughter’s university and what seemed like a great idea became oddly weird too fast. Deanna dropped out because she and her husband decided that financially it will be best if he completed and she going back to finish much later. Now that he is leaving her, she decided to go get her degree and have something for herself.

In the university Deanna made friends with her daughter’s friends and as expected it wasn’t difficult to be welcomed amongst the group, because nobody will be mean to their friend’s mother. I like the chemistry between mother and daughter in the movie, as the writing pair tried to make the movie as realistic as they can.

Deanna got involved with a guy in the university (whose real life back home was the only thrilling shocker this movie delivered), was doing well in her studies and was welcomed as an official member of her group.

The movie’s antics and parties were the ones that will make you wish they did better in the portrayal of all this. For me the one thing that stood out for me as being funny was Deanna’s friend Christine (Maya Rudolph).

The movie did do well in the box-office. Which may be another reason the two could be making another movie. For me this like The Boss (2016) is not a good comedy, but it is a far better movie to digest than The Boss (2016) was.