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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spells &amp; Karma" data-source="post: 418354" data-attributes="member: 23">Mack & Rita (2022) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic1.srcdn.com%2Fwordpress%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2022%2F08%2FMack-and-Rita-Poster.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=af18238f252799558791efb3b691b362c4d4141a02b2f9c13e779039877d6701&ipo=images" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 509px" /> Since I hadn't heard of this film until a few minutes before watching, there was very little expectation, other than that coming from seeing Diane Keaton on the poster, plus getting the sense from a line or two of the synopsis that this was a body switch comedy. The plot is familiar... younger person wishes to be older. Magic happens. Wish is granted. Since this one involves two adults - a thirty year old woman becoming a seventy year old - it's not so much Big as Old. This genre is invariably entertaining, but this mustn't be taken for granted. Sadly, I feel it was here. There's no real emotional stake here. The only jeopardy is based around very surface material things ("Oh no. I'm going to miss my best friend's wedding rehearsal"; "Does the man who lives in my apartment block like me?"; blah blah blah). In terms of filming, I'm not sure which came first: Keaton's performance or that of the actress playing younger Keaton. Sadly, they're both quite annoying, and shrill with lots of squeaking excitedly or screaming with confusion/anger/frustration. Elizabeth Lail is more consistently annoying. Sadly, it's difficult to believe for a second that she's either an old soul or a fish out of water. A pair of glasses and affection for her dead grandmother doesn't not an interesting person make. She's just another blandly generic thirty year old woman trying rather too hard to be funny. Everything about her performance screams that she's "doing" comedy, as though she's imitating someone she grew up finding funny (ironically, this misfire truly makes her the square peg in the round hole the story tells us she is, but for all the wrong reasons). All of which would be forgivable, if she resembled a thirty year old Diana Keaton. Which she doesn't. Then when Keaton arrives there's a whole lot of screaming and neurotic panic. Her performance feels wildly over the top, but not in a good way (for most of her early scenes, I found myself seeing Phoebe from Friends due to her using the same inflections and delivery). She does gradually tone down as the story (such as it is) goes along. She's a great actress, given thankless material here (perhaps enabled by herself since she's also a producer on this film). Good actress, thankless material is actually the order of the day all round. Loretta Devine, Lois Smith and Wendie Malick are among the familiar faces who do nice work against the odds. I'm not quite sure what the film's ultimate message is, beyond a rather vapid and obvious "you must be comfortable in your own skin". Perhaps I'm just the wrong audience for this film and don't get it. Certainly, it's gynocentric. The only male characters are there to serve or screw up: the charlatan guru responsible for the body switch; the fawning groupie who works for the company and is the reason the lead character misses an important date; and the dog-sitting neighbour who is manipulated into loving the younger version once her older self has gleaned enough information about him to use (worse, we know she has "won" her prize at the end because of the possessive kiss she gives him before the assembled audience). So there you go. A romantic comedy that - unless one is of a certain type - is neither funny nor romantic.</blockquote>

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