Thursday, August 01, 2019

Wine Country

A group of friends gather in Napa Valley to celebrate one's 50th birthday. The longer they're around each other, the more their tics wear on one another, the more they snipe at each other, the more miserable they get, until the big blow-up before the reconciliation.

It sounds cliche laid out like that, and the plot is very well-worn, but I actually laughed a lot. More than I expected when I started watching. Jenny's (Ellen Spivey) whispered, "Jesus these people talk about wine a lot," cracked me up. The wine lady being so eager to talk about how organic her winery is, when all these ladies are interested in is getting blotto.

Normally I feel bad for people enthusiastically explaining something they care about to people who can't be bothered to pretend to care, but I also know that feeling where you want someone to shut up and just let you enjoy yourself.

Also, I don't give a shit about wine and all these employees being offended they won't stop to let the chardonnay breathe before gulping it down or because Rebecca (Rachel Dratch) thinks she smells canned peaches. It's her birthday, she can smell canned peaches in the wine if she wants to!

There are several good one-liners, or just bits where all the actresses are being goofy together in a way that feels like how old friends act around each other. The bit where they start doing barbershop quartet or whatever in the wine cellar to take advantage of the acoustics. It's not a long bit, doesn't overstay its welcome. Just there long enough to get a laugh, maybe encourage the audience to sing along.

No? That was just me?

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