The most fun thing about “Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar” is trying to figure out why it’s not fun at all. It stars two comedians,Kristen Wiigand Annie Mumolo, who are generally very funny, and they have an unmistakable rapport. Indeed, there are lots of moments in the movie that are kind of funny, or almost funny, or seem as if theyshouldbe funny. Yet taken together, “Barb & Star” is a total bust.
In a sense, it’s an experiment that doesn’t work, and the fact that it doesn’t work reveals something about the nature of comedy itself. It seems like an attempt by two longtime collaborators to write and star in a film that they themselves consider to be funny; to not worry about story or character, but to create, instead, a transparent joke machine.The idea at work is that the audience won’t mind not caring at all about the story, or about Barb and Star as people, or about their friendship or ultimate fate. The strategy here is to hold the audience’s interest one joke at a time, and to make sure that there are so many jokes that that interest is maintained.
That strategy sounds like it should work.它尤其应该工作,考虑到really are lots of jokes in this movie, and as isolated jokes, they’re not bad. Lots of the bits are unexpected,clever and evenimaginative. They show unmistakable comic gifts. Yet “Barb & Star” remains, from start to finish, the living death of comedy.
Perhaps the lesson here is that even in a comedy — even in a silly, outlandish comedy — there has to be something that the audience believes or values or takes seriously, if only as a background against which the jokes can be seen in sharp relief. Laughter, after all, is often just a reinforcement of the truth. You hear someone say something unexpectedly true in an unexpected way, and the response is to laugh. But what happens in a context in which nothing is real or true? Comedy suffocates, as if in a vacuum.
Think about “Bridesmaids,” a great comedy that Wiig and Mumolo wrote. Remember the hilarious scene in which all the bridesmaids get an attack of food poisoning while trying on expensive gowns in a bridal shop? It’s extreme, slapstick comedy, as wild as any comic scene of the past 10 years, but it wouldn’t be funny if we didn’t believe in the situation, that the dresses are expensive, that the owner of the shop is angry, and that Wiig’s character is mortified at having picked a disgusting restaurant in which to have lunch.
In “Barb & Star,” Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) are inseparable friends, who are zany and oblivious. They have an intense mutual dependency, and it’s suggested that the reason for this is that they’ve both lost a spouse, but that’s OK, because we’re not meant to care about that. Soon, they lose their jobs (we’re not meant to care about that, either) and go on vacation to Vista Del Mar, Fla.
It so happens that there is a monomaniacal criminal mastermind (also played byWiig), who plans to kill everyone in Vista Del Mar, using genetically engineered killer mosquitoes (but we’re not supposed to care about that). AndJamie Dornanplays her underling, tasked with implementing her diabolical plan.
The goal here was to be absurdist, relentless andlight. Well, “Barb & Star”islight —so light it floats off and vaporizes.
K“Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar”:Comedy. Starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. Directed by Josh Greenbaum. (PG-13. 107 minutes.) Available to stream on Amazon Prime starting Friday, Feb. 12.