Scheduling a movie’s release date is an imperfect science and occasionally an art. Just look at the masterpiece that was Barbenheimer.
While most are open to experimentation in figuring out just what audiences want and when in the wild west of modern theatrical moviegoing, there’s also an unwritten rule that it’s best to leave big superhero movie weekends clear of competition. But whoever thought to open the third-act female friendship comedy The Fabulous Four alongside Deadpool & Wolverine deserves a raise. Because if any audience is being underserved on the opening weekend of an oxygen-sucking, violent and self-referential superhero mashup, it’s women over 60.
So, what better way to escape the merc with a mouth than a trip to Key West with Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Megan Mullally?
Photo: AP
In the vein of 80 for Brady and Book Club, The Fabulous Four may not be a great movie, but it’s also better than it looks. Although it strains for raucousness with edibles and a parasailing expedition gone wrong, there is something admirably sane about it too even if you don’t believe a single moment. It begins, as many of these kinds of films do, with a somewhat tortured explanation of why these women became friends in their youth. Though it nods at a slight age difference between college peers Lou (Sarandon) and Marilyn (Midler) and the two gals they met in New York, Alice (Mullally) and Kitty (Ralph), it’s better to not do the math.
Besides, the more interesting question is not why four single girls in the same building became friends, but rather how they maintained that closeness over the decades. This big life mystery goes largely unexplored, instead focusing on the 40-year estrangement between Lou (now a heart surgeon) and Marilyn. It’s a drama that for utterly incomprehensible reasons Alice (a rock star, seriously) and Kitty (a cannabis entrepreneur grandma) are still entangled in.
Marilyn, recently widowed, is newly engaged and desperately wants Lou to be at her wedding. Alice and Kitty lure Lou to Key West under false pretenses, telling her that she’s won a polydactyl (six-toed) cat and can visit the Hemingway House. They don’t have anything more elaborate in store in this lie. Their plan, it seems, is just to roll up to Marilyn’s house and surprise their unwitting hostage. This seems misguided at best but becomes retroactively cruel when the cause of the fallout is finally revealed. Why meddle now?
Photo: AP
The movie was directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, the Australian filmmaker behind great and varied female-focused films like How to Make an American Quilt, The Dressmaker and Muriel’s Wedding, and written by Jenna Milly and Ann Marie Allison. And it never quite harmonizes. These characters, fabulous as they may be individually or on paper, aren’t greater together somehow.
As Marilyn and Lou dance around this ancient feud, you start to feel bad for Alice (mostly there to be a quip machine) and Kitty, who would have much more fun ditching them and going off on their own adventure. Midler plays Marilyn so big and broad that she’s more parody than person, although there is a grain of intrigue in the 70-something who gets engaged two months after her beloved husband dies and becomes obsessed with creating TikToks. Sarandon’s Lou is the most thoughtfully developed character, as a rule-abiding woman whose life is in desperate need of a shakeup. She has some cringey moments too (the aforementioned edibles), but also several charming flirtations with the bachelors of Key West (Bruce Greenwood and Timothy V. Murphy).
This is a movie that should have probably leaned far less on wild hijinks with diminishing returns and more into the smaller moments of what it means to be friends for 40 years. But it’s not without its charms, either. I’m not going to argue with them breaking into song out of nowhere. That kind of break from reality, especially with this cast, is always welcome.
Photo: AP
May 26 to June 1 When the Qing Dynasty first took control over many parts of Taiwan in 1684, it roughly continued the Kingdom of Tungning’s administrative borders (see below), setting up one prefecture and three counties. The actual area of control covered today’s Chiayi, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The administrative center was in Taiwan Prefecture, in today’s Tainan. But as Han settlement expanded and due to rebellions and other international incidents, the administrative units became more complex. By the time Taiwan became a province of the Qing in 1887, there were three prefectures, eleven counties, three subprefectures and one directly-administered prefecture, with
It’s an enormous dome of colorful glass, something between the Sistine Chapel and a Marc Chagall fresco. And yet, it’s just a subway station. Formosa Boulevard is the heart of Kaohsiung’s mass transit system. In metro terms, it’s modest: the only transfer station in a network with just two lines. But it’s a landmark nonetheless: a civic space that serves as much more than a point of transit. On a hot Sunday, the corridors and vast halls are filled with a market selling everything from second-hand clothes to toys and house decorations. It’s just one of the many events the station hosts,
Among Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) villages, a certain rivalry exists between Arunothai, the largest of these villages, and Mae Salong, which is currently the most prosperous. Historically, the rivalry stems from a split in KMT military factions in the early 1960s, which divided command and opium territories after Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) cut off open support in 1961 due to international pressure (see part two, “The KMT opium lords of the Golden Triangle,” on May 20). But today this rivalry manifests as a different kind of split, with Arunothai leading a pro-China faction and Mae Salong staunchly aligned to Taiwan.
Two moves show Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) is gunning for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) party chair and the 2028 presidential election. Technically, these are not yet “officially” official, but by the rules of Taiwan politics, she is now on the dance floor. Earlier this month Lu confirmed in an interview in Japan’s Nikkei that she was considering running for KMT chair. This is not new news, but according to reports from her camp she previously was still considering the case for and against running. By choosing a respected, international news outlet, she declared it to the world. While the outside world
RSS