Richard joins CTV NewsChannel and anchor Lois Lee to have a look at new movies coming to VOD, streaming services and theatres including the virtual reality of “The Martrix Resurrection,” the coming of age dramedy “Licorice Pizza” and Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and the jukebox musical “Sing 2.”
“Dinner with Friends,” a new comedy starring Malin Akerman and Kat Dennings now on VOD, is a Hollywood Hills friends and family farce that seems to have done much of its casting at the nearby Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip.
Dennings and Akerman are Abby and Molly, BFFs who have both recently split with their significant others. After declaring she would love her to “the moon and back,” Abby’s girlfriend left abruptly and Molly is now a single mom after her four-year marriage imploded. Their plan to spend a quiet Thanksgiving is turned upside down when Molly’s one-night-stand (Jack Donnelly) blossoms into a relationship and decides to crash their party.
From there the party grows and grows as word gets out of a Friendsgiving at Molly’s house. Her touchy-feely mom Helen (Jane Seymour) arrives, fresh off her fifth divorce, and gets friendly with Molly’s old boyfriend (Ryan Hansen). Then there’s an assortment of characters like self-described “shawoman” Claire (Chelsea Peretti), the hemorrhoid obsessed Rick (Andrew Santino) and Lauren (Aisha Tyler) who shows up with her husband (Deon Cole), two kids and a stash of magic mushrooms.
Predictably, things swing out of control as friends, family and ex-lovers collide. There’s even a trio of “Fairy Gay Mothers” (Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Fortune Feimster) who descend to offer Abby some life advice.
“Dinner with Friends,” called “Friendsgiving” in the United States, is an all-out farce with a heart of gold. By the time the end credits roll the movie reveals itself not to be about a randy mother figure or a friend’s psychedelic trip. Ultimately, it’s a story of healing and working through dysfunction. Along the way, however, are enough raunchy jokes to curdle your eggnog. It’s an old formula and despite some winning performances—many from the stand-up comics who migrated down from the Comedy Store—it feels as stale as Thanksgiving’s left-over stuffing.
“Spinster” is being billed as “the anti-rom-com of the summer” and if there ever was a genre that needed a kick in the pants it’s the romantic comedy. Director Andrea Dorfman does more than that, curb-stomping the tired old boy-meets-girl formula in a story that celebrates self-empowerment and independence over slow motion runs through airports.
Chelsea Peretti of “Brooklyn Nine Nine” stars as Gaby, a wedding caterer whose boyfriend dumps her on her thirty-ninth birthday. Her friends encourage her to get back into the dating world but she’s not so sure. To avoid ending up like her great Aunt Elise, dead in a bathtub, undiscovered for a week, she tries speed dating and on-line sites but, she says, “I’d full-on rather be knitting.”
In the absence of a romantic life she fills her time hanging out with her niece Adele (Nadia Tonen), watching his brother Alex (David Rossetti) do terrible stand-up comedy and caring for her recently adopted “used dog.” As her fortieth birthday approaches, and the dream of owning her own restaurant comes closer to reality, she finds happiness in self-love and a speech from the opening scene reveals itself not to be prophetic. (SPOILER ALERT) “Everyone, deep down, wants someone to love,” bride-to-be (Amy Groening) tells Gaby early on. “It’s why Shakespeare ended all of his comedies with a wedding!”
“Spinster” has many charms. It has a wisecracking sense of humour courtesy of writer Jennifer Deyell, a snappy score by composer Daniel Ledwell and a firm hand in director Dorfman. Best of all it has Peretti whose practiced deadpan delivery brings some edge to the story. She has a way with a line but she also leads us down the path to Gaby’s self-discovery. As she helps Adele find confidence in her young life, Gaby is blossoming in her own. Her journey has warmth, believability and a great deal of humour.
“Spinster” is a nicely crafted, if somewhat modest, story of looking for and finding satisfaction in one own life, no matter what others say. It’s about a certain kind of love, but colours outside the rom com lines to create something refreshing.
Check out episode twenty-eight of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office) we meet Andrea Dorfman, a filmmaker, animator and artist who joins us via Zoom from her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her films have played at film festivals around the world, won awards and she is back with a new one, now on VOD.
“Spinster” stars actor and comedian Chelsea Peretti from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” as a wedding caterer gets dumped on her 39th birthday. Over the next year she builds a new life based on self-empowerment and independence.
“Spinster” is being called “the anti-rom-com of the summer,” so I began by asking Andrea Dorfman about subverting the rom com genre…
Watch the whole thing HERE on YouTube or HERE on ctvnews.ca!