The last time real-life pals Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo collaborated on a script about female friendship, it was the Oscar-nominated classic Bridesmaids, so one wouldn’t be amiss to have high expectations for their new project, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. Yet the marketing campaign for this film has made it look decidedly average, a paint-by-numbers portrayal of two middle-aged women looking for a good time in the sand and sun. Don’t let that fool you! Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar takes that premise and doesn’t just dial it up, it wrenches the dial right off the movie-making machine and tosses it into the ocean. A wild and wacky comedy with bold splashes of the fantastical — including a murder plot involving mosquitos — Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is the vacation from reality we all need and deserve.
Sail Away
Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) are best friends who live together in a small Nebraska town, work together at a furniture store, and gossip together over mugs of tea. Since Barb’s husband passed away and Star’s husband left her for another woman, the two women have turned inward, and to each other, so intensely that their world has veritably shrunk to little more than a very small, safe bubble where culottes are the hottest fashion trend and Trish is the most fantastic name imaginable.
Like any set of longtime best friends, Barb and Star have a series of stories about funny things that have happened to the two of them (that time they got chased by an actual escaped killer at a haunted house, for instance), but those stories increasingly belong to another era, one in which the two women still had their “shimmer” — one of the many apt ways in which the film describes what it feels like to have let one’s spirit and sense of adventure fade away. So, when another local woman (a pitch-perfect Wendi McLendon-Covey) suggests they visit what she describes as a veritable paradise for middle-aged women looking for a new lease on life, these two homebodies decide to put aside their fears of being swept away by the ocean currents and embark on what, for them, is the adventure of a lifetime: a week-long vacation in Vista Del Mar, Florida.
The airplane journey from the drab neutrals of Nebraska to the pastel-hued paradise of Florida is essentially Barb and Star’s version of traveling via tornado from the sepia-toned Kansas plains to the Technicolor dreamworld of Oz. And like Dorothy Gale, our two heroines quickly stumble into more trouble than they had bargained for when they encounter a handsome young man named Edgar Paget (a scene-stealing Jamie Dornan). Edgar is in Vista Del Mar to carry out a nefarious plot on behalf of the woman he loves (also played by Wiig), an evil mastermind who wants to revenge herself on everyone in Vista Del Mar by attacking them with genetically engineered mosquitoes. (Yes, it’s outrageous, but it’s far from the only thing in the world of Barb and Star that insists you stretch your imagination to the limit.)
If Edgar succeeds in this uniquely bizarre act of mass murder, he has been promised that their romantic relationship will finally become “official,” though it’s clear his love is not reciprocated when we see our villainess reading a book that outlines how to trick someone who loves you into thinking you love them back so they will do what you want. But a drug-and-alcohol fueled night with Barb and Star turns everything upside down — especially when Edgar falls in love with Star.
Shimmer and Shine
It might all seem a bit silly, and it most definitely is, but that is the main source of the film’s substantial charm. Whether it be Star getting life advice from a talking crab who sounds like Morgan Freeman (but isn’t), Barb encountering a sage man in the swamps who claims to be the Tommy Bahama (an uncredited but absolutely hilarious Andy Garcia), or the hotel pianist serenading guests with songs about how many of his high school classmates have died, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar unabashedly embraces the absurd in a way that is practically Monty Python-esque, but with a fuzzier, more feminine touch. Despite our two heroines’ penchant for the deeply uncool — those aforementioned culottes, their excitement over seashell-laden friendship bracelets, their obsession with riding an inflatable banana boat together — the film never laughs at them, only with them, and with love. Indeed, there is not a speck of cynicism or mockery to be found in the world of Barb and Star, and this earnestness is what makes the film’s comedy as refreshing and sweet as a tropical cocktail.
Wiig and Mumolo’s real-life friendship shines through in every scene between the two of them; even when they argue, one can sense the genuine warmth they have for each other. This kind of chemistry between co-stars doesn’t get enough credit; we focus so much on cinematic depictions of romantic love when this kind of love, between two longtime friends, requires just as much emotional investment (if not more so). The two of them bring an important authenticity to all of Barb and Star’s various quirks, ensuring that these characters are real women we care about and not mere caricatures. Both Wiig and Mumolo are approaching the age of 50, and a large part of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is devoted to reminding us that middle-aged women are still people, wholly deserving of having their desires granted and their stories told — not to mention, seducing hotties nearly a decade their junior.
Said hottie is played with downright surprising aplomb by Jamie Dornan, best known for portraying a serial killer in The Fall and Christian Grey in… well, you know. Needless to say, in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Dornan seems overjoyed to be freed from the constraints of those dark and disturbing roles, displaying a knack for physical comedy and a keen sense of timing that allows him to hold his own opposite such practiced comedians as Wiig and Mumolo. When he breaks into a theatrical musical number in the middle of the movie, scaling palm trees with passion and twirling so aggressively that his entire body drills down into the sand, it’s impossible to not break into hysterical laughter at his antics — indeed, it’s one of the highlights of the whole movie. (The film boasts another fun musical number, in which Barb and Star are welcomed to Vista Del Mar and their candy-colored paradise of a hotel, which feels like a far more authentic and joyful tribute to classic Hollywood musicals than anything in recent Oscar-nominated memory).
Despite being objectively, outrageously good looking, Dornan’s performance successfully plays up the unabashed dorkiness of Edgar, a man willing to go to great lengths for a woman who sees him as little more than a square of toilet paper stuck to her shoe. If you can imagine James Bond with the loyal dependency of a puppy and a much lower tolerance for alcohol (not to mention much more respect for women) you’ll have a pretty good picture of Edgar Paget. When he begins a passionate affair with Star — a woman who actually appreciates him for who he is — their romantic liaisons do just as much for his sense of self-worth as they do for Star’s, which is a nice departure from the usual depictions of the love story between an older woman and a younger man; Dornan deserves just as much credit for this subplot working as Wiig and Mumolo do for writing it. Throw in Damon Wayans Jr. as a hapless spy who cannot help but give away all his personal details, add production design that wouldn’t be out of place in a Barbie Dream House, place it all under the capable direction of Josh Greenbaum, and the result is the cinematic equivalent of the weirdest, most wonderful summer vacation you’ve ever had.
Conclusion
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar doesn’t try to get across any more nuanced of a message than declaring the importance of friendship and self-love, but that doesn’t make it any less delightful of a movie. Some critics have already been throwing around the term “cult classic” to describe it, and while I think it is a bit too early to ascribe such a status to this film (or to any other film within a year of its release, for that matter), it’s easy to see why people have done so with this oh-so proudly weird little gem. Yet I also feel that a large part of the appeal of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is that it brings a much-needed ray of sunlight to a world that has largely not yet emerged from beneath the dark cloud that is the coronavirus pandemic.
In any other year, would Barb and Star’s journey of self-discovery have hit quite the same way? Probably not, though Dornan’s dance number would be funny as hell under any circumstances. Yet being able to live vicariously through them on their dream vacation when I have barely left my apartment in a year definitely contributed to how much I enjoyed their misadventures in the Florida sun. In the world of Barb and Star, there are no face masks, only tacky necklaces made from palm leaves and pearls—and culottes, obviously. I hope we too can get there someday.
What do you think? Are you a fan of Wiig and Mumolo’s previous work? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is available to rent on demand.
Watch Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
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