Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler are two former best friends who have drifted apart after a past altercation ruined their friendship. A couple years pass and Midler is set to be married again with Sarandon unknowingly becoming a bridesmaid with the help of two other friends (Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph). That's the premise of the new chick flick, "The Fabulous Four". Right off the bat, "fabulous" is too strong a word for describing this flick. Perhaps the words "baffling" and "boring" would be far more accurate.
You can make captivating chick flicks that reach out to more than just the titular target audience. It's been done multiple times in the past, with works such as "A League of Their Own" (1992), "The Women" (1939) and most Nancy Myers films. In able to do so however, you need a reliable foundation that most of the audience can get behind. If you don't, you end up with a blatantly inconsistent mess along the lines of what we have here today. And no, the predictable and dull story isn't the only element sinking this film.
The thought process behind the production quality is a mystery to me. There is zero refinement in terms of its presentation and audio. You get some good shots of Key West, Florida, where the story is set. But then you stumble into glaring scenes such as the one where our four leads are on a motorboat. There are shots of them on the boat proper. Then we get some obvious green screen effects with three characters on a gliding sail. That is then followed by a literal iPhone video of them from the gilding sail, vertical screen and all.
Now what makes sense about three separate shooting techniques for a scene that should've really only had one from the get-go? This glaring lack of continuity can also be heard in David Hirschfelder's background music. When it was just a piano being played in one or two scenes, that felt right for the story presented to us. However, when a full orchestra is playing which is most of the time, it feels out of place to the point of distraction. It completely goes against the tone of simplicity desired from a typical chick flick.
I originally decided to see this film for two reasons: I wasn't scheduled for my actual job that day, and it was raining mostly all day. I can count off the good aspects of "The Fabulous Four" in one hand. Megan Mullally has some of the film's best jokes as a reefer addict. There's one tidbit involving Mullally talking to Ralph's daughter that wasn't a bad joke. These three younger people that tag along these four, specifically Sarandon, have an interesting insight or two. I already mentioned a few shots of Florida being nice. The acting isn't awful, although a few line reads are.
That covers all of the positive things. I was going in expecting this to be cringey and shrill. What I was surprised by was just how bored I was with what unfolded on screen. Yes, there was plenty of eye rolling and wincing on my part over the film's weak humor and painful jokes. But I didn't expect to be close to dozing off to sleep as many times as I did. I knew where the primary character arcs were going to go and how they were inevitably going to resolve.
I didn’t care about Midler's commitment to TikTok, not that I wanted to. I didn’t care about Sarandon and Midler's tension over the lovers they shared. I almost gave this film a point for not quite going to the route it was set up to go, but I immediately took that point back since it got cocky and bragged about it for far longer than it should have. Add to that a shrill musical number of an already existing song with the cast to close this off, and you have yourself a quartet you're better off without. Even the final verdict score feels generous.
Final Verdict: 4/10
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