Life of the
Party isn’t that great of a movie, to the point where it’s hard to
recommend you go see it—unless you’re a Melissa McCarthy fan. Even if you are,
this movie didn’t hit the mark for me on the funny meter until about
seventy-five minutes in.
The movie is
directed by Ben Falcone and written by Falcone and Melissa McCarthy. It’s also
the third movie they’ve worked on together, including Tammy (2014)
and The
Boss (2016). The acting in this movie might have been good, but
the story was nowhere near focused on entertaining the audience.
Packaged very
much like a B-movie with a misinformed idea of what people find funny
nowadays, Life of the Party lacked life in itself.
The movie follows a mother and wife, Deanna Miles (Melissa McCarthy), who finds out her husband has been having an affair and is leaving her for his new catch. This happens early in the movie, as I guess the writing pair wanted to focus more on Deanna’s life back at university rather than her and her husband falling out of love.
The idea of
focusing on her life at university seemed like a great idea at first—until she
re-enrolled in her daughter’s university, and what seemed like a great idea
became oddly weird way too fast. Deanna had dropped out because she and her
husband decided it would be best financially if he completed his degree, and
she would go back to finish hers later. Now that he’s leaving her, she decides
to get her degree and have something for herself.
At the
university, Deanna makes friends with her daughter’s friends, and, as expected,
it wasn’t difficult for her to be welcomed into the group—because who’s going
to be mean to their friend’s mom? I liked the chemistry between mother and
daughter in the movie, as the writing pair tried to make it as realistic as
they could.
Deanna gets
involved with a guy at the university (whose real-life backstory was the only
thrilling shocker this movie delivered), does well in her studies, and is
welcomed as an official member of her group.
The movie’s
antics and parties are the parts that’ll make you wish they’d done better in
portraying all of this. For me, the one thing that stood out as funny was
Deanna’s friend Christine (Maya Rudolph).
The movie did well at the box office, which might be another reason the two could be making another movie together. For me, like The Boss (2016), this isn’t a good comedy, but it’s far easier to digest than The Boss was.
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