How do writers (and stars) Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo dive back into the creative swimming pool after the phenomenal success of Bridesmaids? For starters, you wait a number of years and then you come back with Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar.
The duo wrote and star in a sublime farce that is utterly charming, surprisingly sentimental, and wholeheartedly hilarious. Whereas Wiig was the star in Bridesmaids and Mumolo merely had a small role, the longtime off-screen pals are clearly basking in the glory that is getting to not only pen a film together again but act opposite one another—starring as best friends whose connection could not be more palpable.
Mumolo plays Barb, while Wiig is Star. As we meet the pair, they are having one of what is probably a million typical conversations between the two that have us hanging on their every comical word. There is something incredibly immediate with this manner of character introduction. Barb and Star are who they are and that comes through immensely in those opening moments. That also accomplishes something important. We are vested in these two and their goings-on from the get-go. Like the most effective of Saturday Night Live skits (of which Wiig was famously a cast member), the characters are so well-drawn and comedically chilling that our tether to them must be established in seconds.
That is exactly what occurs in Barb and Star.
Right before the two suffer a few personal setbacks that shake them to their core, a friend (played by Bridesmaids vet Wendi McLendon-Covey) tells them about the titular Florida locale. When the two BFFs, who are also housemates in their Nebraska abode, come to the conclusion that there is nothing on their table in the near future, they decide to do something that they’ve never done—take a vacation.
… and we’re off—to Vista Del Mar.
There they meet Jamie Dornan’s Edgar Pagét, who audiences were introduced to earlier and who is central to a conspiracy-driven attack engineered by our villain (who knew such a comedy would have a Zoolander Jacobim Mugatu-type archetype in a Wiig and Mumolo creation?). Our baddie is also played by Wiig, which lets her go full-on-zany. It seems there was some childhood trauma teasing and that has led Wiig’s villain to zero in on the titular Florida locale, a site that happens to find our two leads.
Pagét, Barb, and Star are on a collision course and all the while, the viewer is treated to several movie musical type numbers. They’re all fantastic, but (who would have thought?) it is Dornan’s solo song, Edgar’s Prayer, that almost steals the whole movie!
The reason Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar works is several things. The chemistry between our titular characters could have had us hanging with these ladies all weekend and not simply for a few hours. There is also a world that Mumolo and Wiig have created that exists solely in the movies in the most exaggerated and entertaining way. Isn’t that when comedy is at its best? When it pushes the envelope and introduces us to not only comedic characters but situations that allow them to bring their unique brand of goofy together with other tropes.
In this case, one of those spokes to this funny wheel arrives in the form of a fellow baddie, a child villain (yes, Wiig has company with Reyn Doi’s Yoyo). The world first was introduced to as he was singing Guilty by Barbra Streisand and Barry Gibb in the Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar trailer), comedy is at its best.
Some of the most frustrating SNL skits have a pointed fault, they go on too long. The same could be said here as the only issue with Barb & Star is that there are a few moments that could have been cut.
Comedies are at their best when they hoover around the 90-minute mark. Del Mar clocks in at one hour and 46 minutes. Perhaps some of the villainy material could have been tightened because we wouldn’t want to lose a single second with Wiig and Mumolo.
When it comes to cleverly thought out, yet still fabulously mindless entertainment, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar is exactly the escape from the world we need right now.
Grade: B