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Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is a Silly and Sharp Surreal Little Lark


It’s usually not a good thing when a comedy movie can be accurately described as being from another era. And especially when that era is the 90s and the brand is what appears to be ill-advised Saturday Night Live adaptations like Coneheads and A Night at the Roxbury. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is not based on an SNL sketch, as much as it may seem like it due to the presence of Kristen Wiig, the outrageous caricatures of lead characters who enter the film fully formed, and a plot that has a lot of the staples of a sketch drawn out to feature length. But in actuality, the film has just as much in common with and is perhaps more indebted to, that family of silly comedies of the late 90s/early 2000s often anchored by an SNL veteran that became the biggest movies on the planet for a while. Movies like Austin Powers, Zoolander, and Anchorman, with an unrelenting enthusiasm, a boundless energy, and big broad choices to match their big broad characters.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is very bizarre. It is not the feel-good girls’ trip comedy it has been sold as (though beneath all the absurdity you could make the argument it is). It is way more inventive and surreal and honestly funnier than that premise. Headlined by its’ writers, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the same pair who wrote Bridesmaids together, it’s about a pair of midwestern women who decide to go on a vacation for the first time when they’re laid off from their quaint job at a furniture store, selecting a resort town called Vista Del Mar in Florida. Wiig says that they came up with the title first and it shows -the movie very much seems built around that charming rhyme with everything sprouting from it  a kind of exercise in spontaneity. The movie is better for this though, not concerning itself so much with plot or dynamic character arcs as much as just how funny it can be. And the movie is very funny!
From its’ lively, exceedingly goofy tone that meshes the vacation movie with the Bond film, to its’ marvellous pay-offs, wide assortment of jokes ranging from the larger than life to the minutely specific, and just the personalities and perspectives of its titular characters themselves, it doesn’t much waste time between laughs. A lot of this is down to Wiig and Mumolo. Wiig of course is a proven comedy powerhouse at this point and demonstrates so once again here; but Mumolo, in by far her largest acting role, is a relative stranger to audiences. She leaves an impression though, an equal partner to Wiig throughout and often just as funny. In fact, she’s the star of most of my favourite moments, even though she plays Barb. And I definitely wouldn’t mind if this turns into a breakout role for her. The pair have an amazing, natural chemistry, the sincerity of which does penetrate through the colourful culottes and Minnesota-nice accents (though the characters are actually from Nebraska) -and yet  they occasionally have a performance rival in the unexpected Jamie Dornan, who can best be described as a much more successful take on the Chris Hemsworth stunt casting of Wiigs’ Ghostbusters. At the same time there are moments tinged with a stiffness or a slight awkwardness (though to his credit Dornan rarely seems uncomfortable, it might be more on the scripts’ shallow writing of the guy); but a handful of really good deliveries and one outrageous out-of-nowhere musical number from him that might be the films’ most hysterical highlight make up for it.
That number (as well as another that shows up randomly) is really well staged, the direction from first-timer Josh Greenbaum (he’s directed for television and made some well-received documentaries, but this is his first narrative feature) is quite good for a comedy. I particularly like how he uses the exact same shot structure for two back-to-back sequences that better highlights their repetitiveness. The production is very striking, Vista Del Mar being an obscenely bright and colourful paradise of a sort I have to assume is yet another calculated exaggeration (then again, I’ve never been to a tropical resort). The cinematography is really lush too, this is certainly one of the most visually appealing comedies in quite a while.
And the overwhelming unreality, the stylized atmosphere that goes along with this has the effect of making the whole movie feel almost like a fever dream. It’s weird that a scene where the characters do drugs is one of the less outlandish bits –though admittedly dancing to a club remix of “My Heart Will Go On” is pretty trippy. It’s such a loose, intoxicatingly artificial world where anything goes, and yet there’s no sloppiness –the jokes are very cleverly structured and serve a purpose more than just being goofs. Though there isn’t much slapstick, there’s a definite cartoon influence permeating throughout. It doesn’t always pay off: Wiig’s second role as the films’ supervillain doesn’t offer a lot besides some freaky make-up and one beautifully ludicrous backstory, and the less said about her slightly racist diminutive Asian minion the better.
But that loony sensibility also allows for the film to be genuinely unexpected and subversive in a way a lot of mainstream comedies really aren’t anymore. As much as aspects of those aforementioned turn-of-the-century movies haven’t aged well, there was an impulsivity that made them work, and it’s been missed as the genre has shifted more towards realism and dramedy. And there’s such a silly earnestness to Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar’s own unrelenting dumbness that it’s not difficult to just be swept along for the ride –hopefully on a high speed banana boat!

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