Movie Review: 'Quiz Lady'

Quiz Lady (2023)

Directed by Jessica Yu

Written by Jen D'Angelo

Starring Awkwafina, Sandra Oh, Will Ferrell, Jason Schwartzman, Holland Taylor

Release Date November 3rd, 2023

Published November 7th, 2023

Quiz Lady is a curiously boring movie. Despite having a spitfire star in comedian and actor Awkwafina, Quiz Lady sputters and drags its way through a dimwitted plot on the way to an unearned happy ending. As someone who is a huge fan of Awkwafina's work, Quiz Lady is uniquely disappointing. Playing against type as a grumpy, frumpy, afraid of the world shut-in, the typically appealing qualities of Awkwafina are dialed back to nothing. Why would anyone want to make a live wire like Awkwafina into a wet blanket? It makes no sense.

In Quiz Lady, Awkwafina plays Anne Yum, an office worker who is obsessed with a Jeopardy-style quiz show called Can't Stop the Quiz. Hosted by Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell), the show became a life preserver for young Anne when her parents broke up. Since then, Anne has never missed an episode. She's memorized the questions, and is so familiar with the trivia and tropes, she can reel off the answers to any question right off the top of her head. No one knows yet that she can do this, she doesn't get out of the house much.

Naturally, that state of affairs will change. Anne's ordered, shut-in, life is upended when her mother goes missing from her nursing home. The disappearance leads to the return home of Anne's tornado of a sister, Jenny (Sandra Oh). Jenny is homeless and jobless, couch-surfing while she waits for what she claims will be a big payout from a lawsuit she filed against a chain restaurant. Jenny is coming home to stay but not long after arriving, she puts her sister on a path to get out of the house.

As Jenny records Anne getting all of the answers to the quiz show correct, she's also live streaming the scene on Instagram. This turns Anne into the viral sensation known as 'the Quiz Lady.' The viral clip catches the attention of Can't Stop the Quiz who invite Anne to be a guest on the show. Anne wants to say no, her anxiety about appearing on TV is overwhelming, not to mention the fear of embarrassing herself in front of her hero, Terry McTeer. Anne's hand will be forced however, when her mother's debts lead to her beloved dog Linguini being kidnapped and held for ransom. Now she has to win on the TV quiz show to save her dog.

That plot description is deeply convoluted and not at all embellished on my part. It's a lot of plot for not a lot of movie. The makers of Quiz Lady pile on the back story and refer back to that back story as if we have actually seen it play out. It's a visual and storytelling disconnect that undermines the scenes we do see which are more mundane and mostly unfunny. Anne's anxiety is so bad she nearly blows off her audition. Jenny gives her drugs and she gets so high that she can barely compete. Then Jenny gives her more drugs and she's able to answer every question while fearing for her life.

The drug scene is a strong example of the tired tropes that make up this desperately mundane comedy. I counted two laughs in Quiz Lady. Two. One laugh comes when Anne's neighbor, played by Holland Taylor, explains why she has a picture of Paul Reubens in her apartment. And the second laugh comes when the late Pee Wee Herman shows up late in the movie to give Taylor a much needed thrill. It's wistful seeing the late Paul Reubens in one of the final performances of his career, in barely a cameo, but of course it's quite funny, he was a genius and his persona is used to good effect in his very brief appearance.

Other than that however, Quiz Lady is a lazy, boring, slog. It's a dreary movie that takes forever to get to the Quiz portion of the movie and even once it gets there, the film can't resist being maudlin when it should be gaining comic momentum to carry it to the ending. That momentum never comes and the movie just lays there while Sandra Oh mugs at the camera and Awkwafina stands slump shouldered and sullen, desperately miscast as someone who doesn't have the wild charisma of Awkwafina. Quiz Lady is dreary, dull, and deeply disappointing.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and nearly 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.Blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks!