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FRIENDSGIVING
Director: Nicol Paone Cast: Malin Akerman, Kat Dennings, Jack Donnelly, Aisha Tyler, Jane Seymour, Ryan Hansen, Deon Cole, Chelsea Peretti, Christine Taylor, Andrew Santino MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:35 Release Date: 10/23/20 (limited; digital & on-demand) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 22, 2020 Writer/director Nicol Paone's Friendsgiving bundles together a bunch of characters and comic ideas, hoping that at least some of them will work. Most of them don't, and that's mostly to do with the simple fact that there are so many of them. At the beginning and end of the movie, the main focus is on the relationship between best friends Molly (Malin Akerman), a famous actress who is also a recently divorced single mother of a newborn, and Abby (Kat Dennings), who's cynical and depressed after the somewhat-recent end of a (as we find out, pretty abusive) relationship. The two are supposed to celebrate Thanksgiving together, but it turns out that a lot of other people—friends and family—want an alternative to the usual holiday festivities. There are so many characters here that it would be difficult to list—or, for that matter, remember—them all. The major ones include Molly's new and often-shirtless (the punch line to an amusing joke that just persists for no reason) boyfriend Jeff (Jack Donnelly), her domineering and "sexually active" mother Helen (Jane Seymour), and her flirtatious ex-boyfriend Gunnar (Ryan Hansen). Right there, Paone has established at least three different comic setups and conflicts, and we haven't even mentioned Molly's friend Lauren (Aisha Tyler), who takes psychedelic mushrooms and ends up making out with Abby to the shock of Lauren's jealous (because he wasn't part of it) husband (played by Deon Cole), or the string of women who have been invited in a matchmaking plan for Abby (They break the fourth wall to offer their dating profiles). Many, many more characters are introduced, provide a gag or two, and quickly are forgotten. Paone's screenplay crams in so much of such hit-or-miss quality (mostly misses) that the movie essentially becomes chaos. That's the kind of the point, since the party brings out the worst of the characters (their frustration, their regrets, and their long-gestating agitations) so that they—well, some of them, at least, because, again, there are so, so many—can work through those problems. It simply doesn't work, though. A tighter focus on any one of these characters, relationships, or ideas (Paone gives us the central friendship, after all) might have asserted a bit more control over the movie's chaotic intentions. Instead, Friendsgiving is just a messy exercise of extraneous excess. Copyright © 2020 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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