iTunes Exclusive Episode Life Of The Party

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it is time for another...
Number 378 for those of you playing the home game.
Welcome.
My name is Rob.
I am the executive producer of the clubhouse podcast and I like a party and once again I am
scared of it.
But I'm not alone for this particular episode joining me across the desk as he tends to
do from time to time is the official fact checker of this show.
And a man who's been called Mr. Party, at least once in his life.
You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mama named him Don Ford, I'm going to call
him Don Ford.
Welcome, sir.
One time when my mom left town for the night in high school, we had a party in the house.
It was a mistake.
I never did that.
My mom had to fear God in me.
Is our first time and cops came all that, it was not pretty.
Whatever we do one of these, it is to review something and this is no exception.
Time to talk Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone as we talk about life of the party.
For us on something?
Yes, sir.
We got to thank JT and everybody at 11 for the invite.
Thank you guys so much for letting us come see this.
Actually, I went to this one.
We were kind of sweating.
I was doing Chick-fil-A.
Yeah.
You were doing it yourself that night.
So I went to this one and we love our vendors because our vendors give us the opportunity
to see films ahead of time so that we can tell you guys about them and you can make the
best possible decisions for your entertainment dollar.
So Ben Falcone is the husband of Melissa McCarthy.
He has directed her and all of his feature films so far.
Not all of hers, but all of his.
Here's the one that Bridesmaid or whatever.
He was in it, but Paul Fee directed Bridesmaid's.
I mean, but her husband Ben Falcone's in it, he's the TSA agent guy that she grows on
the plane.
But he directed her in the boss, if you remember that.
Yeah, I remember that, saw that.
And he also directed her in, it was the other one that he did with her.
Tammy.
Okay.
Everything else somebody else directed, but this is their third actor and they also co-wrote
it by the way.
Okay.
So here's what you need to know.
Melissa McCarthy plays Deanna.
She's the middle-aged mother.
She, in the very beginning of the film, she's dropping off her daughter for her senior year
of college.
Right after they drop her off, as her pulling away, her husband says he wants a divorce.
Okay.
And she talks about this being there all in modern.
He's saying, no, I finished.
You didn't.
So as she's trying to find herself again after this divorce is announced, because he's
leaving her for another woman, played by the great Julie Bowen from modern family.
She decides she's going to go back and finish college in effect becoming one of her daughter's
classmates.
Reversed back to school.
Not real back to school.
Not really.
Oh, really?
Okay.
And I'm glad you mentioned that because I do discuss that in my written review, currently
located at www.theclubhousebump.com.
That's kind of our website.
It gets there eventually.
Many people have seen the show including myself and was like, this is just a gender
swap back to school.
Okay.
It's really not because back to school with Rodney Dangerfield, Thornton Mellon was just
to do that just wanted to party and be in college.
Her character, Deanna is kind of the opposite of that.
She's not rich.
She's very shy and reserved.
And she just loves her daughter and that's it because she's been a mom her entire adult
life.
Okay.
The thing is like when I gave you the plot, there's the plot.
She just goes back to school.
There's not much more to it.
She wants to get her archeology degree.
Okay.
That's nice.
Congratulations.
The downside to that is there's no plot.
It's an hour and forty something of that.
Just her going back to school.
Hour forty five of that.
There are parts of this story that are incredibly rushed in my opinion, but I don't know making
the film longer would have done any good for it.
So when you have a plot that's this basic and doesn't do a lot of movement, you have
to rely on a cast to carry it.
So let me run you down the list.
Melissa McCarthy.
Okay.
Gillian Jacobs from community.
Okay.
Julie Bowen, the great Stephen Root.
Many people know him from office space.
Maya Rudolph, Chris Parnell.
So you've got some star power here.
Yeah, I'm looking at the Ibted page right now.
The good news is they carry it.
I'll do the okay.
The relationships.
There's a couple of cool little twists in it.
One of which I didn't see coming until right before it happened, which I thought was it's
one of the moments in the film and I think the audience laughed the loudest.
You also have one of your current SNL cast members in this film too who plays her roommate
in the dorm because remember she loses the house because she's very divorced.
So her roommate is played by Heidi Gardner who's currently on SNL and I actually believe
that her work in this is better than most of the stuff she's done on SNL.
Really?
Yeah.
It's it's real.
It's got a good heart to it.
It's a lot of fun.
It's very, very funny.
How does the comedy be though?
Very, very funny.
Okay.
There was many, many laugh out loud moments during this film and I very much enjoyed it.
There's a cute little cameo at the end and I'm not going to say who it is.
You'll figure it out at some point but and the connection of how it happens is actually
kind of funny.
This is not one of those films that people are going to go to expecting a lot and you
shouldn't.
It's a basic comedy and it's fun.
And in a summer movie season where it's big budget, epic films, stuff's gonna explode.
This is actually really good counter programming for that.
If you want to just spend an hour and 45 minutes of your life just go out there and have
it a good time.
That's really what this is.
There's a little bit of it that you kind of go, okay I mean I can roll with that I guess.
I wouldn't say there's a huge suspension of disbelief here, but there are a couple
of subplots that you go, okay that could happen kind of things.
It was a two long, not really.
I thought it was just about the right length of, I like also like in a film Jimmy O Yang
who plays Tyler who's the boyfriend of her daughter.
He's very, very funny in this and all of the girls that play her sororities because
she's in a sorority which and this is a minor spoiler, but nothing major.
The sorority name is Theta Mugama, OMG, I mean I caught that right away and I was like okay
I see what you did there, that's kind of funny.
But there and she does there's certain things that she does to help get her the quote unquote
college experience for her senior year.
Steven Root plays her dad who we, and you know I'm a huge fan of that dude, like you've
got people that have worked on VEEP in this film, some Netflix veterans as well.
It's one of those films, I'm not even sure how to say like this is just one of those films
that's just fun to go to.
It's not something that you should expect, you know just, oh my gosh this movie is
going to blow me away and when you look at the career of Melissa McCarthy, this is not
necessarily one of those films that will be seen as one of her greatest films.
I mean this lady has done some amazing work that it's going to be tough to beat.
I mean bridesmaids alone, even though not her film, she's very heavily figured it.
The heat, another one of my favorite films of hers that she's done.
I mean, you're looking at a career that spans, you know, not as, her career really got kicked
off in 97, and even then it was just one episode of the JD McCarthy, so JD McCarthy,
it's her cousin.
But when you look at the pantheon of her career, this is not going to be seen as one of
the best films she's ever done.
But it's going to be way far from the worst.
This is one of those films I don't even want to say guilty pleasure.
This is just a fun movie that you should go see.
Like bridesmaids might be on that list or the heat pie, but this will not, but still you're
not going to ruin her.
No, not at all.
It's, yeah, it's better than some of the other movies that I've heard of.
Hey, you leave that movie and I enjoyed that film very much.
I mean, it made my top 10 words of the year, remember?
It is, but I still enjoyed that film.
But this is just a fun movie.
It's a fun summer movie.
Okay.
And the other questions that you have for me is the final analysis.
The way we do the final analysis on this show, we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs
down.
We're not going to give you letter grades, numbers, degrees, anything like that.
Don's going to ask me two questions, up to two questions anyway.
Question number one is, would I see this film again if the answers know that we're done
here?
If the answer is yes, then he's going to ask me how far I'm willing to go to see it.
And from the best of the best of the worst of the best, here's how it works.
That price at a theater, down to a twilight show, down to a matinee, down to an early morning,
down to a second one at the dollar theater, down to actually leaving your house and getting
it from red box or streaming on Netflix or cable.
Rob.
Yes, sir.
Carrying wine is one to know.
Would you see this film again?
I would.
I would.
I very much enjoyed this film.
So what level would you recommend a desk?
Ooh, that's a good question.
I would say a matinee because it's worth, it's worth first run.
Okay.
I'm not sure that I would go to the extreme with it.
It's a lot of fun.
There's some, there's some plot points that get a little thin.
So you're going to start a morning matinee?
Yeah, go, go.
Go have lunch and go see this and then go about your business.
I mean, it's a fun movie.
I really, really enjoyed it.
I'm just not sure that we can put it on that top shelf.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
All right.
It is Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy working together again.
Oh, by the way, one slight spoiler in three, two, don't say the one.
There's a scene where Maya Rudolph plays her best friend.
Okay.
And they're playing Racketball and drinking at the same time.
Okay.
And there are these two old guys out in the lobby that are like, come on.
Just let us, you know, they're kind of giving them grief.
Yeah.
When I looked in the credits, those two old guys were Melissa McCarthy's dad and Ben Falcone's
dad.
Okay.
So I thought that was kind of cool.
Yeah.
Kind of a nice little moment there.
Yeah.
But it is life of the party.
Forging this whole thing?
Yes, sir.
We got big JT there.
We're going to film before it's release and getting a chance to share our thoughts about
it with the Empire.
We love our vendors so much.
They're such great people.
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