ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS (B+) - Edina and Patsy crack me up. And Bubble! Don't get me started.
If you've missed these debauched middle-aged hedonists from the '90s (Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley), they are back in a 90-minute romp, with an actual plot, a bevy of cameos, and their patented perfect timing as comedians. Along for the ride are Eddy's dour daughter, Saffron (Julia Sawalha), and her irreverent old mum (90-year-old June Whitfield).
There's a thin whiff of a plot -- Eddy, big-footing her way through a fashion event, accidentally knocks Kate Moss into the Thames, where she is presumed to have drowned -- but it's only a lame excuse to send our gals on the lam (in Cannes) so that they can get in trouble while Saffy frets as only she can. The one-liners fly, and the characters quickly fit snugly again, like a pair of old Nikes. Like Laurel and Hardy, except funny.
The soundtrack thrums, and the number of celebrity sightings is ridiculous -- Lulu, Emma Bunton, Joan Collins, Graham Norton, Jon Hamm (cringing at the sight of Patsy and the recollection of what they once did together), Stella McCartney, Jerry Hall, Perez Hilton, Jean-Paul Gaultier, and a bunch of others I've never seen or heard of before. Mo Gaffney reprises her role as Bo, and Barry Humphries is a hoot as the Bob Guccione-like ancient playboy, an ex-lover of Patsy's who is the main hope of extricating them from this mess. (And Humphries' Dame Edna is glimpsed, as well.)
But at the heart it is Saunders and Lumley, executing comedy at a rarefied level. Saunders wrote the screenplay, and Lumley steals every scene with a sneer (and occasionally with a fake mustache, too). As always, they are worth the price of admission. Toss in Horrocks and her silly outfits and deadpan delivery (presenting a tray of hate mail to Edina, she intones, "Your death threats, m'lady"), and we're wallowing in it. And the beauty of this exercise is that such a nostalgia trip can't possible come off as sad and desperate; the gals have always been pathetic. Why should they ever stop shoveling their shtick?
EVERYBODY WANTS SOME (C-minus) - A complete misstep by Richard Linklater, who might be on an epic slide that may be tough to correct. This is yet another nostalgic trip to the writer/director's hallowed youth, this time to the beginning of college, where we follow a bunch of baseball players getting to know each other.
The thump of "My Sharona" from a car stereo in the opening scene raises hopes and the pulse from the start, but as soon as our white-bread hero, Jake (the beyond-bland Blake Jenner, apparently a refugee from TV's "Glee"), is established, the movie descends into a rut and never recovers. This fond remembrance of the 72 hours before the first day of classes for these freshman jocks never feels authentic. Linklater obsesses over details of the year 1980 (the porn 'staches, the knee-high tube socks, the oppressive hits of the day) in a creepy, fetishistic manner. He shoots in bright lighting, and his cast seems almost intentionally wooden.
The boys (all white dudes except for the jovial token black player) romp with each other at clubs, make moves on coeds, play practical jokes on each other, and spout the filmmaker's patented faux bullshit philosophy as if they were reading from textbooks. The actors playing the jocks come with names such as Juston, Ryan, Tyler, Wyatt, Temple and J. Quinton Johnson, and they have about as much charisma and screen magnetism as those preppy monikers suggest.
Eventually Jake makes cute with Beverly (Zoey Deutch), who has the ordinary girl-next-door beauty of Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island." The two of them moon over each other like Dobie and Gidget. The dopey love story completely crashes the final third of the movie.
In fact, the movie plays like a movie that was made in 1980, a weird Pat Boone version of "Animal House." It is antiseptic to a fault. The soundtrack is quite predictable, with a few safe punk or new-wave songs tossed in to give the appearance of a little edginess. A caucasian rap-fest by the actors over the end credits is just the final embarrassment.
Linklater may require an intervention. "Boyhood" -- a similarly vanilla attempt at whitewashing the past -- was an admirable experiment. This one is a tin-eared clank of a movie. Let's hope he isn't thinking of completing some sort of retro trilogy.
BONUS TRACK
Our title track:
And a consolation prize to Linklater for unearthing this early Dire Straits gem, "Hand in Hand":
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