Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum, 2021)

I do too love contemporary Hollywood cinema. It's just that I cannot stomach franchises and Marvel/DC/Disney tentpoles and feel-bad horror flicks and middlebrow Oscarbait which leaves...Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar! For sure, it adheres to a formula as much as anything listed above, xeroxing the template for Booksmart and, especially, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. And the Marxist in me needed more information about how the title duo can afford to go to Vista del Mar after being laid off from Jennifer Convertibles. But Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo's stoopid screenplay has no room for logic or even information as evinced by my favorite line of the film screenshot below. And they deserve props for the warm, gentle fun they poke at a culture rarely represented for being so widespread: middle-aged women of middle America who attend craft fairs, watch QVC, join book clubs, and chat 'til they drop. All that and it's a musical too! Hooray for Hollywood! 

Grade: A-minus