Ranking the Movies of 2018: Week 18

As much as I like to write about film language, I occasionally can just not pay attention to it and just enjoy some jokes. The film language of Life of the Party is, admittedly, rather pathetic. Director and co-writer Ben Falcone is not a visual stylist. He’s barely able to make one scene transition comfortably from one to the next. So why don’t I hate it? Well, let’s go through the reasons why I probably should and then see if I can explain it.

There are chunks of Life of the Party, visual elements and story elements that are just missing from the movie. Early in the movie after Melissa McCarthy’s stay at home mom character has been dumped by her husband, Matt Walsh, she goes to her parents’ home and spends time there with a series of clumsy gags. With no transition, McCarthy is suddenly at her home and setting her soon to be ex’s things on fire.

We can only assume she’s gone back to her home from her parents’ home because her husband’s things are there. Nothing tells us that she has left her parents’ home and only the context of previous scenes gives us an indication that the scene has shifted. There is no dialogue used to set up the change and since we’ve never been to the home before and the parents’ home is not explored visually, you’d be forgiven for missing the idea that the main character has changed locations.

The scene of McCarthy’s character burning her husband’s things features prominently in the film's trailer, but in the movie it is clumsily inserted. We barely know this character as this scene arrives. We don’t know that she’s prone to such an angry outburst. The scene is funny because who wouldn’t want such a cathartic vengeance after being victimized as McCarthy is when her husband abruptly and cruelly breaks her heart, just after dropping their daughter at college and on the eve of a planned, week's long vacation in Italy.

What is worse than the lack of setup for this scene, however, is how this scene has no payoff. After the fire and minor, unexplained explosion that throws McCarthy for a pratfall, the scene is never mentioned again. There is no fallout or recrimination. She doesn’t get in trouble, the husband never mentions the violent outburst, and the whole thing is forgotten. It breaks the minor amount of reality that Life of the Party establishes.

So why don’t I hate Life of the Party? It’s undeniably clumsy and poorly structured and yet I laughed a lot. Melissa McCarthy is so winning that I can’t hate her, even as she forces jokes and punches her way through a predictable, clichéd story. McCarthy is such a force of nature personality that she can improvise her way through a scene and make the randomness of the jokes work. She’s aided by supporting players such as Gillian Jacobs and Maya Rudolph who are nearly McCarthy’s equals in making random gags funny despite the nature of the delivery.

Our classic on this week’s Everyone’s a Critic Podcast was Mean Girls starring Lindsey Lohan and written by Tina Fey. Mean Girls is a strange movie to reflect on as the life of Lindsay Lohan casts a strange shadow over the film. In Mean Girls, Lohan was all promise and hope. She’s the straight man to a lot of broad jokes, but she seems at home in that role. She’s a proper foil for such humor and her innocent character is ripe for the journey from innocent to failed ‘Mean Girl’ to young woman who learned a valuable lesson.

She’s a perfect foil for the rest of the cast who are representative types rather than characters. Rachel McAdams is the resident bitchy babe, Lacey Chabert is her witless lackey, and Amanda Seyfried is a classic airhead. McAdams and Seyfried however, are movie stars and their caricatures have more skill than just caricature. McAdams is more than a stand in for uber-popular girls, Regina George was a meme ready creation that became the definitive Mean Girl.

Seyfried’s bubble-headed character may not have set the ultimate standard of airhead characters, though she must be close, few have followed with as much memorable work. Seyfried’s work is so good that she transcends the very cliché she’s portraying. Seyfried’s character has the best gags in a very funny movie. She’s a definitive scene stealer in a movie of scene stealers and she’s doing so playing a Hollywood caricature that’s been done to death.

Next week, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 will join the ranks along with the new comedy Book Club, the new kiddie flick Dog Show or Show Dogs or something, and the Everyone’s a Critic Podcast classic, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Why LOTR? Because Willow is turning 30 years old that weekend and thus will also join the ranks of my 2018 movie watching list.

New rankings below and new additions to the list are in bold type…

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2. Juno

3. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

4. Black Swan

5. Phantom Thread

6. Black Panther

7. Tully

8. His Girl Friday

9. Best F®iends

10. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

11. Annihilation

12. Kodachrome

13. Unsane

14. Just Charlie

15. Columbus

16. Young Adult

17. The Death of Stalin

18. Hostiles

19. A Wrinkle in Time

20. Foxy Brown

21. Becks

22. A Quiet Place

23. Captain America Civil War

24. Game Night

25. Are We Not Cats

26. Boogie Nights

27. The Ballad of Lefty Brown

28. 12 Strong

29. Red Sparrow

30. Mean Girls

31. Act & Punishment

32. Life of the Party

33. Los Angeles Overnight

34. Salome & Wilde Salome

35. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

36. Actors of Sound: A Foley Artist Documentary

37. Switching Channels

38. I Feel Pretty

39. Tomb Raider

40. Stormy Monday

41. Ready Player One

42. Insidious: The Last Key

43. Sheik Jackson

44. Gringo

45. Love, Simon

46. Isle of Dogs

47. War Games

48. Samson & Delilah

49. Heat

50. Hell’s House

51. Hurricane Heist

52. The Miracle Season

53. Blockers

54. Avengers Infinity War

55. Early Man

56. Almost Paris

57. Bloodsport

58. The Last Movie Star

59. Play Misty for Me

60. Frantic

61. Reds

62. 7 Days in Entebbe

63. Taffin

64. Beirut

65. Super Troopers

66. Super Troopers 2

67. Samson

68. Friday the 13th

69. Rampage

70. Last House on the Left

71. Burnt Offerings

72. Paddington 2

73. Traffik

74. Pacific Rim Uprising

75. Sherlock Gnomes

76. Chappaquiddick

77. Cloverfield Paradox

78. Breaking In

79. Peter Rabbit

80. Overboard

81. Proud Mary

82. The Mist

83. God’s Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness

84. Den of Thieves

85. Death Wish 1974

86. Death Wish 2018

87. Bad Samaritan

88. Knowing

89. The Commuter

90. Fifty Shades Freed

91. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built

92. Midnight Sun

93. Forever My Girl

94. Every Day

95. Strangers Prey at Night

96. 15:17 to Paris

97. Truth or Dare

98. The Greasy Strangler

99. Maze Runner: The Death Cure