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You may say to yourself that “age is just a number,” but there are ways that you feel it, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. But when you get together with your buddies, the facets of your life that you might not want to reveal usually come out in a haze of alcohol. Amy Poehler’s first directorial effort, Wine Country, is a comedy about just such a trip. Read on for more…
WINE COUNTRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Abby (Amy Poehler) and her core friend group have been together since they met as waitresses at a Chicago pizzeria in the early ’90s. Now, they’re spread out all over the place, but they stay close on group calls and text chains. Abby decides it’s high time the six of them got together, and she uses the 50th birthday of Rebecca (Rachel Dratch) as the excuse. She does all the arranging, and anally insists that they all go to Napa and rent a gorgeous house. She creates a precise itinerary to maximize the fun and togetherness.
As we get introduced to the group, we find out some of what’s going on with them: Abby is divorced and has thrown herself into work, but we see her packing her desk. Naomi (Maya Rudolph) has four kids and a good marriage but is avoiding some sort of troubling health news. Rebecca, a therapist, likes to give advice by prefacing it with the word feedback, but she can’t see that her husband is a world-class doof. Catherine (Ana Gasteyer), a frozen pizza magnate, is up for a judging slot on a cooking show and can’t untether from her phone; she also feels she’s an afterthought to the group. Val (Paula Pell) is newly single, has new knees and is attracted to younger women. Jenny (Emily Spivey) doesn’t want to go anywhere or do anything.
When they get to the house, they meet Tammy (Tina Fey), the forthright loner who owns the place. She warns the women that trips like this usually lead to a lot of difficulty, emotions, and truths being revealed. “Remember, whatever gets said, it’s probably what the person has always felt, and the alcohol just let it out.”
As the weekend goes along, the six friends have a fun dinner where Val hits it off with young waitress/artist Jade (Maya Erskine), and put up with “the man that comes with the house”, Devon (Jason Schwartzman), making his squid paella and talking about his love of ’90s douche bands. They also consult a tarot card reader named Miss Sunshine (Cherry Jones) who tells them they’re all hiding things from each other.
During a wine tasting tour where they care more about getting drunk than the “floral notes” in their glasses, the truths come out, especially when it comes to Abby’s desire to have the “best weekend ever”, Catherine’s desire to work, Naomi’s health scare, and Rebecca’s marriage. It all comes to a head the next day, during Rebecca’s actual birthday party.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Girls Trip seems like the most recent and similar example of the “besties going on a trip and stuff comes out” genre.
Performance Worth Watching: No one really stands out, and that’s a good thing. Poehler, in her first directorial effort, made a wise choice to make a movie starring buddies that she’s worked with on SNL and elsewhere for over 20 years. The friendship that these six women have off-camera is evident in the easygoing chemistry they show on camera.
Memorable Dialogue: The group’s version of “That’s what she said” is “We say that now,” meaning that this group now talks about things like medications, CPAP machines, and other vagaries of middle age.
Single Best Shot: Naomi drunkenly climbs up on a piano to sing “Eternal Flame” at one of the wineries, and promptly falls off.
Sex and Skin: Pretty chaste movie…. Besides Abby sleeping with Devon, after a long pause to consider his offer. When they wake up, Abby takes off her CPAP mask and says “Devon, get the fuck out.”
Our Take: As we said, Poehler kept Wine Country all in the family. Spivey and Liz Cackowski (who plays an annoying organic wine sommelier) wrote the screenplay that she directed. It’s a pleasant-enough film, with a number of big laughs during its 108-minute runtime. But it moves along at a leisurely pace, without much of a plot beyond the truths and fights that you might see during a typical Real Housewives trip where everyone is fighting over who gets the biggest room.
Because six characters (and to a lesser extent, Fey’s and Schwartzman’s supporting characters) have to be serviced, no one really gets a story that they can sink their teeth in. It’s especially evident for Spivey and Pell, who are writers who occasionally act. It feels like they got the short end of the characterization stick, and, while they don’t feel like caricatures, they aren’t particularly deep, either. But even with the other four, their personalities come down to one tic, like Rebecca’s inability to examine her own life, or Catherine’s obsession with work.
The film also takes a few wayward side trips, like going to Val’s artistic tribute to The Nanny so the GenXer buddies can all yell at their millennial counterparts. It feels that the time could have been taken to deepen the main six characters.
The person who squeezes out a lot from her limited camera time is Fey; we find out a whole lot about Tammy’s gleeful loner act from some pretty clever dialogue, along with Fey’s performance. We wish the main six characters got dialogue that would have revealed even half as much as Fey’s dialogue did.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Wine Country a fun weekend watch if you just want a bunch of good laughs and a few moments where you’ll cringe in recognition of your advancing age.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
