As Tina Fey herself said in her autobiography, writer Paula Pell is a “goddamn hit factory” and her latest film, Sisters, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler is straight off the factory line. Of course, because this is a film written by and starring women there will – and already have been – comparisons with Bridesmaids and this is only fair because both films set the comedy bar so high, not because of all the ladies present during the making of this film.
Sisters is the story of, wait for it, two sisters who find out that their parents are selling their childhood home. Tina Fey plays Kate Ellis, the older and wilder beautician sister of Amy Poehler’s character Maura Ellis who is a nurse. Even though the pair are in their forties they take umbrage at their parents moving on and decide to throw one last rager at their house in the hope of reliving their teens one last time before their childhood home is sold forever.
Of course their return brings up old friends and an old rival in the form of Brinda, played by Maya Rudolph who apparently was cast via a text from Tina asking “Would you please come and play a really awful woman called Brinda for us?” Brinda, the uninvited guest, makes it her mission to sabotage the party. While the other guests are determined to have the time of their lives and forget all their adult responsibilities.
But this film is not really about Brinda vs Kate and Maura. In fact it is about a lot of different things which, for a lesser writer, might have made the plot quite unwieldy but Paula just about manages it. There’s the storyline of Kate and her teenage daughter who have a kind of Ab Fab relationship but with a little empathy thrown in for good measure. There’s Maura’s recent divorce and her crush on new neighbour James, played by Ike Barinholtz, there’s the sisters coping (or rather not coping) with their parents leading their own lives and of course there’s the relationship between the sisters.
Considering how different these two are it’s perhaps a little difficult to understand quite how they came to be so close. In one scene they read their wildly contrasting teenage diaries to each other in the bath. Kate’s diary is full of parties and boys. Moira’s… not so much. They certainly don’t strike you as a natural pair of party planners but then with Kate to get the party started and Moira on standby to make sure no-one chokes on their own vomit, maybe it does make sense. And with them swapping party personas so that Moira can let her “freak flag fly” there’s certainly a whiff of ‘walking a mile in her shoes’ about this film.
Overall this is a great, funny and silly film. There are some great scenes that could stand alone as SNL sketches, such as when the sisters shop for their party outfits or in the nail salon where Maura tries a little too hard to be PC. Probably the stand out scene from the film is one involving a wind up ballerina figurine, just because this film was written by a lady doesn’t mean it can’t have a gross out scene! One of my only criticisms is that there is not enough Rachel Dratch in this film. But that is my criticism of most films.
Sisters is out in cinemas nationwide on Saturday 12th December!
