This hectic and sentimental comedy, though built on a firm foundation of familiar experience and stifled pain, is a sad waste of sparkling talent. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler star as the fortyish Ellis sisters. The elder, Kate (Fey), a cosmetician, is the free-spirited single mother of a teen-age girl, Haley (Madison Davenport); the younger, Maura (Poehler), a childless and recently divorced nurse, is compassionate to a fault. When their parents (Dianne Wiest and James Brolin) sell the family home in Orlando, the Ellis sisters rush there to clear out the room that they shared throughout childhood. Once they’re back in their home town, their old friends turn up, and their old memories well up, along with frustrations and grudges. Maura needs to cut loose, Kate needs to calm down, and both seek to fulfill their needs by throwing a wild party in the empty house. The belabored raunchiness of the physical and verbal humor is further burdened with facile psychologizing. There are solid subjects at hand—adults’ seemingly unending adolescence, the burden of solitude in middle age, the unspoken demands of family ties—but they remain undeveloped. Directed by Jason Moore; with Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, and John Cena.--Richard Brody, "Movies - Now playing,"
The New Yorker, 4 Jan. 2016.
