Life of the Party (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 105 minutes.

R

This isn’t the worst Melissa McCarthy movie, but it’s close. There is a trick to deciding whether or not to attend one of Ms. McCarthy’s movies. If she is just an actor in the film, the odds are good that it will be funny, like Identity Thief (2013), which was a riot directed by Seth Gordon and written by Craig Mazin.

If, on the other hand, she or her husband, Ben Falcone, have anything to do with writing or directing, like Tammy (2014) and The Boss (2016), stay away. Their work strains to barely achieve the level called shallow.

In this, the husband of Deanna (McCarthy) tells her he’s divorcing her in the first five minutes of the film. Shocked and devastated, she decides to go back to college to get her degree in archeology, choosing the same college attended by her daughter, Maddie (Molly Gordon), and joins the same sorority.

The situations are absurd. Except for a slightly humorous bare two minute stretch in the middle depicting a mediation scene between her and her ex-husband, one waits in vain for something, anything to appreciate and/or entertain.

This debacle is directed by Falcone and written by the two of them, and it is truly awful. It is low class, glorifies excessive drinking, drug use, sexual promiscuity, justifies mindless revenge, and is singularly unfunny. How these two get people to fund the junk they manufacture is beyond my comprehension, especially in light of the abject failures of their prior efforts.

McCarthy is a competent comedic actress when she has both good material and a good director. She should stick to acting and leave the writing and directing to people who have those talents.