Wine Country unites several of Saturday Night Live’s most notable women performers, including Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, and Ana Gasteyer, along with SNL writers Paula Pell and Emily Spivey. The film serves as Poehler’s directorial debut and comes from a screenplay co-written by Spivey. For those who are big SNL fans, this is like a dream come true. The film banks heavily on the chemistry between all these beloved comedians, all of whom are good friends in real life. And while they do deliver on some solid laughs and really likable moments, they could have come at a more consistent pace.
The film follows Poehler, Rudolph, Spivey, Pell, Gasteyer, and Dratch as a group of women all on vacation for the weekend in California’s Wine Country, in celebration of Rebecca’s (Dratch) 50th birthday. The women try to make the most out of the weekend with partying, dancing, and reminiscing of old times, though often feel disconnected from each other as their many personal troubles often get in the way of the good time.
The plot is very by-the-numbers, and often hits very familiar territory. Many of these characters are friends who have grown old and grown apart, and trying to rekindle a booming sisterhood they once all had. It’s well-intentioned, as it touches upon the themes of family, and the yearning for a sense of belonging. Though the film often doesn’t do much to make itself stand out from other films that have tackled similar themes before. In fact, there are many moments in which the feels reminiscent of the similarly-themed Sideways, another mid-life crisis movie set in Wine Country, down to some moments where wine is often used as a metaphor for their own personal troubles.
The film is often very sweet, and does benefit greatly from the chemistry all these women have together. The fact they’re all friends in real life was a huge plus here, as the way they all play off each other feels very natural, and can be fun to watch. Though at times, the film does feel a bit too much like it was just an excuse for all of them to hang out and drink wine rather than actually tell a great story. And I mean that quite literally. There are quite a few scenes throughout this movie that really don’t do much in terms of plot or storytelling. They’ll just be drawn out scenes of all the main characters literally just dancing around, singing pop songs, and drinking wine. These scenes, while cute, stop the story multiple times, and just feel like unnecessary tangents.
If these scenes were meant to show how close these women are (or once were), it still would have been unnecessary, as the movie makes it blatantly clear from some of the repetitive dialogue explaining this throughout the movie. The film often brings back some of the same arguments, and same exchanges about the same topics without doing much to resolve any sort of conflict, until towards the end. Things used to be a certain way between all these characters, now they’re not, and they’re now going to get upset over it, whether it be they’re a workaholic, or they’re lonely, or going through other family issues, and they’re not really doing much to work past it. It can be a little tedious, and because of how hits some of the same beats repeatedly, it does cause the movie to drag at times, especially towards the middle.
Even in some of the jokes, the dialogue can often feel repetitive. There are scenes in which characters react, and spit back out to the audience what was just shown on screen. They’ll see something, and comment on it in some sort of confused matter, repeating what they’ve just seen, but that’s it. There are moments where it feels the writing is stuck in an endless cycle that it has a difficult time getting out of.
There’s one painful sequence in particular that’s telling of this where Jason Schwartzman’s Devon is introduced halfway through the movie. The character provides various services for anyone who stays in the house the main characters reside in, but wasn’t present the first day due to previous obligations, and suddenly just appears in the house on the second day. Only two of the main characters see him at first, and the next couple of minutes are dedicated to, one by one, everyone else joining the scene, and just repeating, “Who’s Devon,” and someone explaining who he is, but not putting any new spin on the explanation. The joke is how he appeared out of nowhere, and the dialogue keeps going back to that one funny moment, but offering nothing new to keep the joke going.
Despite a fair amount of sore spots, the film isn’t flat-out unfunny. It actually has its faire share of moments where there are some genuine laughter. While the film often recycles familiar plot threads, it can occasionally thrown in a joke where it’ll subvert a cliched moment in these sort of schmaltzy films. Characters will be in a moment, and the scene will suddenly stop and shift gears in a fairly humorous matter. It can feel abrupt but at the same time, is timed pretty well that it gets some good laughs in. The banter between many of the lead women does have its bright spots as well, where they’ll mock and fire off insults at one another. Many of the core cast here had improv backgrounds, and there are scenes where those skills do shine. These often keep the movie afloat, and it would have benefited the film had they been consistently present.
And while this film has moments that are funny, it’s boosted by just how likable the cast can be. Amy Poehler mostly sticks to what she knows best here, playing what feels like a less quirky version of Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation. She’s the de-facto leader and big planner of the group, and often has a domineering presence the way she does. It’s played less for laughs the way it was in Parks and Rec, but she’s very much in her comfort zone and it helps her shine.
Paula Pell is another brilliant part of the cast, often feeling very reminiscent of Melissa McCarthy’s character from Bridesmaids, with some of the funnier one-liners throughout the movie. Though she winds up being distinctly different from McCarthy’s character that she winds up having one of the better subplots in the film, involving the extremely charming - if slightly underused - Maya Erskine (star of Hulu’s PEN15) as a waitress whom she has a crush on. One of the more likable plot threads in the film, its only downside winds up being that it ends too abruptly, which is a shame, because the energy of both Erskine and Pell could have easily made for an engaging movie all its own.
Tina Fey is also fairly funny, getting some solid banter of her own, as the owner of the house the rest of the characters stay at. The only issue with her character is that while she is funny, she often feels shoehorned into the movie. While it’s well-known how she and Poehler are great friends, and it would have been a shame to see them only share limited screen time together, it often feels like the film made any excuse it could to include Fey, despite the fact she added very little to the plot outside of her initial appearance. Her times on screen are welcome and funny, though it just feels she could have been integrated a little better.
The rest of the cast are charming, though at times feel slightly underused, and can feel outshine by supporting cast members like Erskine and Shwartzman. Dratch, known on SNL for her many bizarre, quirky characters, feels mostly restrained throughout this movie, acting more as one of the voices of reason throughout this. It’s not until more towards the end where she starts to let loose and show off what made her so likable on SNL to begin with. Rudolph and Spivey mostly feel reactionary, providing running commentary where they can throughout the film, though not really having much in terms of unique personalities of their own. Gasteyer is one of the only other characters with any sort of backstory or character arc, though she often feels one-note through most of the movie, with her issues feeling more like a running gag than solidly built character development.
For a movie that brings some of SNL’s funniest women together, the results could have hit a little harder. Though while Wine Country is an uneven experience, with some glaringly obvious faults, the positives do actually outweigh the negatives. Its cast isn’t completely utilized to the best of their abilities, but many of the moments where they’re simply allowed to play off each other, it’s quite entertaining, and they’re all very believable as a tight-knit group of friends, which adds a nice likable charm. Its humor can be hit-and-miss, but when it hits, it gets some good laughs. So far one of the better original movies to be released on Netflix this year, Wine Country is a likable, if uneven, experience.
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