[yasr_overall_rating]
Two sisters decide to throw one last house party before their parents sell their family home.
Who would dare miss the opportunity to see massive-appeal comediennes Tina Fey (Kate Ellis) and Amy Poehler (Maura Ellis) together onscreen shamelessly pitted against one another? Director Jason Moore obviously answered that question as a no-brainer due to the unwavering popularity of SNL’s most popular female bratpack. Adding more fuel to the comedic fire, is Bobby Moynihan (Alex) whose continuous stand-up act never takes a break during the movie while attempting to get a rise from the audience every single time Tina and Amy paused to take a breath. What starts out as a hilarious farce ends up being a sometimes lethal combination of funny, funnier and ridiculously unreal situations that weren’t necessary to get the main point across.
Sisters Maura (Amy Poehler) and Kate (Tina Fey), who are seemingly polar opposites, find themselves in an 11th-hour predicament as they make plans to say goodbye to the childhood home that their parents put up for sale. Their decision to have a grown folks party at the property is agreed upon once they decide that Kate (the hothead), will be the party mom who doesn’t drink, while Maura (the laid back one) will be the aggressor who will make a last-ditch effort to get her life back after a nasty divorce. When the house is transformed into “Ellis Island,” the sisters are convinced the right crowd, drinks and great music are the perfect setting for party central. When the party begins to flop right before their eyes, the stakes are turned up and drugs, sex, and a high-powered deejay are added to the mix to liven things up.
The sisters begin to lose control of the crowd when Maura gets so caught up with seducing neighbor James (Ike Barinholtz) that she forgets she isn’t the only one in the house, and Kate decides that she no longer wants to be the sober party mom and starts to drink heavily. When Kate’s jaded friend Brinda (Maya Rudolph) decides to crash the party, all hell breaks loose and the walls literally start tumbling down as she performs several shenanigans to get back at Kate for being snubbed in prior years. Before long, the house is in total ruins and if that isn’t enough, the sisters get into a big fight about a situation that involves Maura harboring Kate’s teenage daughter without her knowledge. The sisters are ratted out when their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest) make an unexpected visit and are furious to find that their clingy daughters have made yet another mistake in life that the parents end up paying for.
By the end of the film, when the sisters have to make good of the mess they made, they learn that they had more in common than they realized and very much needed to repair the family relationships that had been torn apart with their destructive lifestyles.
If you are in search of a few good laughs to fill lots of small voids, this film is the perfect setting for humor that needs no introduction and has no filters. Prepare yourself though, for unwarranted overkill that may make you a little less fanatic about two great female comediennes who can still laugh at themselves while aging gracefully all the way to the bank.
In theaters December 18th
