QUIZ LADY - Mark Reviews Movies

Quiz Lady, 20th Century Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 2, 2023

In many regards, Quiz Lady probably shouldn't work. On a plot level, it's a mess. In terms of its comedy, the film heads down so many different avenues of tone and random paths of thought that it almost feels desperate to cram in as many jokes as possible. It doesn't matter if it makes sense to the story or to these characters. The filmmakers came up with a gag, so here it is.

All of this is true, but one truth tops all of that and more that could be leveled against this film. Funny is funny, and this film is pretty funny, despite and sometimes because of those apparent flaws and shortcomings.

Much of that is thanks to its two leads. They're Awkafina and Sandra Oh, playing estranged sisters who are reunited after the loss of their mother. Oh, she's not dead, as the two discover to completely different reactions from the nursing home where the unseen woman has been for some time. No, she ran away to Macao with a new boyfriend she found at the home, because mom is an avid gambler. We'd call it an addiction, especially since the mother turns out to be in debt to a local bookie for $80,000—a debt that the guy passes along to the sisters.

Look, the plot is already coming up here, and we haven't even set up the basic premise of the story. That's partly why Jen D'Angelo's screenplay is as cluttered as it is. The mom disappearing and the debt and the bookie are just one thread going on in this narrative, and it would be easy to argue that they're completely unnecessary components of it, too.

After all, the real story of this film is how Awkwafina's Anne, who has watched every episode of a primetime quiz show since she was a kid, battles her insecurities in an attempt to become a contestant on that TV staple. What do a criminal creditor, an abducted dog, and a Philadelphia hotel that's themed on Ben Franklin have to do with Anne's hopes and dreams and person demons? They have nothing to do with that, really, except that those elements can give us jokes and that this is a comedy.

Who cares how or why D'Angelo and director Jessica Yu decided all of this seemingly extraneous material should be included, as long as it's funny. It is for the most part, thankfully.

Anyway, Anne is an obsessed fan of the long-running quiz show, hosted by Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell, in a bit of inspired casting for those who recall his "Saturday Night Live" days of parodying another game show institution—and also just an amusingly sincere and aloof performance in general). She knows all the answers to the questions before the contestants can even buzz in with their responses.

Her personally and professionally aimless sister Jenny (Oh), who ends up staying with Anne (because she's currently living out of her car and assumed she'd be invited if their mother had in fact been dead), records her display her lightning-fast knowledge and posts it online. The video goes viral, leading that bookie (played by Jon "Dumbfoundead" Park) to Anne. He takes her trusty dog, which is somehow—to the shock of everyone—still alive after more than 20 years, and gives Anne a few days to pay off her mother's debt. There's a particularly good, playing-against-expectations bit with that bookie, who promises Anne will never see her dog against if she doesn't pay up—although for a reason that's actually kind of deviously sweet.

Obviously, Jenny convinces Anne to overcome her fear of being embarrassed, particularly in public and especially on a nationally broadcast TV program, and audition for the quiz show. This results in some familiar gags, such as when Anne has to participate in the audition while high on too many of some of the many pills Jenny keeps in her purse, and some clever ones, such as how the fake Ben Franklin (Tony Hale) finds an unexpected enemy in Jenny's dedication to picking apart the illusion of the hotel's theme and a scene at a sports bar where local baseball fans don't take kindly to the idea of watching a game show—unless, maybe, if there's money on the line. Okay, some of these might be predictable, too, but there's a degree of specificity to the humor that makes them feel a bit different.

It also doesn't matter too much, because Awkwafina and Oh are so charming and amusing in these roles. Oh plays the perpetual wild child, who acts with little thinking and speaks with even less of it, with a hidden heart of gold, and she embraces that. However, it takes a certain degree of skill to make a scene that revolves around half-buried feces in a backyard into the emotional core of both a character and a relationship, but somehow, Oh pulls off that trick.

Meanwhile, Awkwafina continues to show herself to be one of the most naturally gifted comic actors of her generation—if not just working right now—when given the right material. She can cull humor from between the lines in a single reaction shot, but here, it's the way the actor channels discomfort into the core of this character that makes her so pathetically but sympathetically funny.

By the time the story finally does arrive at the inevitable climax (Jason Schwartzman, by the way, plays a multi-time winner on the show with just the right levels of fake charm and sliminess), it's not surprising how many more jokes Quiz Lady has in store. It is a shock, though, to find that the sincerity of the sisters' relationship, as well as Anne finding some comfort about who she is, has snuck up on us.

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