This fun and diverting comedy from work wives Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who co-wrote 2011’s Bridesmaids, has a silly premise. After being made redundant, culotte-wearing besties Barb (Mumolo) and Star (Wiig) use their severance pay to escape their midwestern hometown for a holiday at the Palm Vista Hotel in Florida. It’s a “middle-aged paradise”, and so Edgar (Jamie Dornan), the young Irish heartthrob they meet at the bar, sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s there on business, involved in a sinister plot involving genetically modified mosquitos.
The sci-fi stuff is tedious, but Wiig and Mumolo are bawdy and brilliant as ever, their effortless chemistry bolstered by years of collaboration. As for Dornan, a notably sombre and wooden screen presence in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies, he is required to prance about a sandy beach, participate in several musical numbers and even shake a pair of maracas. He’s an interesting, amusing casting choice, genuinely endearing here as a supervillain’s accomplice and wannabe boyfriend. Comedy, it seems, is a less awkward fit.
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