Barb and Star go to Vista del Mar
Photo: Cate Cameron / Lionsgate
Stoner’s comedies are rarely appreciated in their time. Especially in stoner comedies that are not explicitly about getting high. Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar, in which Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo play two best friends from the Midwest who go to sunny Florida and find themselves in a lot of trouble, may seem on their surface the crazy and mass-appeal comedies on which Wiig built much of her success. But make no mistake – this is a weird cinema, full of non sequiturs, oblique cuts and an impressive level of commitment to the part of its stars. If it was opening in theaters, we would probably be talking in a few days about how it burst and burned at the box office. And then, a few weeks later, we would be calling it a modern classic. Enough predetermined for cult status.
That mentioned commitment is the key to these photos. The best pothead comedies win you over with a discreet insistence on your demented vision. You start uncertain if that kind of humor “works”, and then the performances, often by sheer willpower, end up putting you on its strange wavelength, the film inventing your audience as you go along. Here, Wiig and Mumolo exude all the charming energy of a duo who built these characters throughout their lives; theirs already looks a little classic. Living a monotonous life in the quiet town of Soft Rock, Nebraska, Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) are shaken when they lose their jobs at the local Jennifer Convertibles, where all they’ve apparently done is sit on their favorite yammer display couch far. (“I had a dream that I made love to that man in the Pringles can.” “What did Pringles taste like?” “Simple. I like everything simple.” “Do you know who I had a crush on? Mr. Peanut.” “Oh my Man! ”” There is something about him. ” “Well, he’s so smart.”) After being defeated from their “talking club” by the club’s friendly fascist leader (played by a lovely Vanessa Bayer), they decide to shake up their lives by taking a trip to Vista del Mar, Florida, a city whose travel brochure fell into his hands through his friend Mickey (Wendi McLendon-Covey), who says he felt the place gave him a “soul shower”.
Delivering their lines with complete sentences of each other, panache, Wiig and Mumolo form a small ecosystem of two people of random observations and constant distractions: These are people whose big dream is to ride a banana boat together, who will drop everything when they see a tent of innovative shell gifts, and who can talk during an entire plane trip about their love for the name “Trish”. And when it’s all over, we’re kind of excited about the new gifts of sea shells too, and we can even rejoice a little when “Trish” appears (as it should). Directed by Josh Greenbaum, the film around them – a sunny, colorful fantasy filled with montages and musical numbers and cameos (including Andy Garcia as Tommy Bahama, somehow even funnier by the fact that the end credits quote the actor playing Tommy Bahama as “Tommy Bahama”) – combines with his tacky, exciting and cutting energy.
While Barb and Star try to inject a little adventure into their lives, a sinister, pale-faced genius in a hidden lair, Sharon Gordon Fisherman (also played by Wiig), plans to destroy Vista del Mar through a vast army of trained killer mosquitoes. (It’s all revenge for a childish humiliation that, in a characteristically Byzantine manner, involved her being dropped from a cannon into the pool of a distant Disney cruise.) To help carry out her elaborate plan, she dispatches her henchman Edgar (Jamie Dornan) to Vista del Mar, when he meets Barb and Star at a bar. Soon they are sharing a huge drink with drugs and waking up in bed together. The presence of hunky Edgar threatens to separate Barb and Star, as they are both horny for him, but no, our heroes are very suitable and loyal to ever state this openly. Instead, they politely sneak behind their backs and make all kinds of ridiculous excuses for where they are. (“I went to a turtle’s house” is one of the best.) Meanwhile, Edgar spoils things so much that Sharon needs to send another agent to fix his mess. This agent, played by Damon Wayans Jr., is somehow even more inept.
There are almost no real humorous setpieces in Barb & Star, nothing that achieves comic happiness by climbing to new levels of hoarseness. (Although there are some hilarious musical numbers, including a glorious one in which a passionate Edgar shakes, splits, jumps and spins on a beach, singing verses like “I’m climbing on a palm tree / Like a cat on a palm tree / Whoever decided to climb on a palm tree ”and“ Seagull on a tire, can you hear my prayer? ”) The comedy doesn’t build as much as it buzzes, subtle in form, but absurd in content, which conquers us not so much through laughter, but because it makes us feel as if we were privy to a wonderfully bizarre internal joke. Or, to put it another way: this is a film that pauses for some extended wisdom of a wise old crab named Morgan Freemand (with advertisement) and then continues as if nothing has happened It’s funny enough at the moment, but it’s much funnier half an hour later, when you think to yourself, This is a movie that paused for some extended wisdom from a wise old crab named Morgan Freemand. With a d. It is entirely possible that I am laughing more at this now than during the film.
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