The Fabulous Four
The Fabulous Four
The Fabulous Four: In Hollywood, being a senior male actor and receiving a high status comes with earning roles such as a soldier who has been shipped off to combat (Michael Caine), an angry father or God (Morgan Freeman), Indiana Jones or an inspiring doctor (Harrison Ford), a fighting Tom Cruise, a Freudian worried about Rome’s future (Sir Anthony Hopkins) or a gun-toting Eastwood.
A performing role that best fits their ages and stature is to be equipped with witty comical Nano comedies of friends getting what best describes a summer holiday adventure that trumps the epics of a forlorn era. This problem of striking imbalances comes in full for “The Fabulous Four” – a role including strong and acknowledged personalities and then reduced to such abominations that the writers of “The Golden Girls” would have been unable to write something that is more childish.
Directly drawing inspiration from her professional credentials is Susan Sarandon as Lou who is more of a realistic character with a dark side due to being a cardiac surgeon and has the appearance of a ‘Cat Lady’ making her uptight and completely devoid of laughter; Married for 48 years, With so much love, one would have thought Marilyn would mourn the death of their husband, residing in Bette Midler’s four-wall mansion only to have her marry again impulsively after two months; We have Megan Mullally as Alice whose glamour is her drinking, drug using and promiscuous singing; Sheryl Lee Ralph plays Kitty who is sweet, raised a daughter with a great bond due to her weed Alison, only to become faith based overnight.
A fast treatment to consider would be something along the lines of: During the early part of the The Fabulous Four film, Bette Midler’s real daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, can be seen portraying the character of Marilyn’s daughter.
Marilyn is spending her time in a grand estate in Key West where Ernest Hemingway is said to have stayed while he was writing two of the books they seem to mention quite frequently almost as if there is some payout for it. She asks Kitty and Alice to the wedding but leaves Lou out since they haven’t been in good terms for a long time. So Kitty and Alice have no choice but to feed Lou the kind of ludicrous excuse that is only plausible in poorly written scripts: they do not speak of Monroe. All that is said is that she has received a six-toed cat as gift from the Hemingway house.
When Lou learns that she has been duped, she concedes to remain. But she is still resentful of how Emmanuel betrayed her trust, and for no distinguishable reason, it has been evident since the very start of the story that when Marilyn finally divulges everything it will be unimpactful. During the entire trip, she interacts with a set of 20 somethings whom she met at the airport on the plane and in the course of time accidently becomes a magnet for their idealized version of a “badass”.
Marilyn is so worked up about achieving the goals of her ostentatious wedding that she hardly pays attention to the fact that other people consider her behavior to be excessive.
For the kind of plot twist that only grassroot screenwriters write, the heroine does not let her friends meet her fiancé until the evening before the wedding but then it’s obvious that too many conveniences are expecting her for a sweet and not unpredictable surprise. But the four are too busy going through some next level hilarious misadventures. Lou uses a Kegel (pelvic floor) exercise ball that Marilyn has given to her as a slingshot to aim at and take out a bicycle thief! Lou is high and so, severs the rope connecting her to the parasail as she dreams.
Yes, such sort of immature jokes are intended by Lou’s closest friends who seems to have ganged up on her and wasted her with marijuana for no apparent reason. Another intended-to-be hilarious scene takes place in a strip club in the US which the director’s daughter-in-law Angela worked in for fast cash – a star performer connected to one of the women is recognized when she sees the birthmark on his bare butt while he is pounding the bride-to-be from behind at what appears to be her bachelorette party.
There are forty or more producers credited to “The Fabulous Four” on the Internet Movie Database including almost all executive producers that are always stated in vain. Three are Mullaly, Sarandon and Ralph. These women are quite confident in respect of what comes to their skills and in what they consider an adequate scenario.
Niche comedies always garner the required funding – was the movie just a means to an end? Or was it that they simply wanted a vacation in Key West, fully subsidized? The view is stunning, if the chicken shots weren’t pervasive.
The film features protagonists trying to act their roles with some flair and presenting extraordinarily shallow parts completed with childish fumbles. There are nice parts when they perform and also in one scene a duet with Michael Bolton. It just makes sense to us that it should have been a documentary about a concert. Or, as Gene Siskel would blurt out, I would rather watch a movie in which the four actresses just sit there and meander about everything instead.
Instead, we are instructed to listen to tedious “punch lines” about how great weed gummies are, an older woman exposing herself on TikTok every hour of the day, “I’m going to rip your clothes off” battle scenes where she then apologizes, characters who are heroes for laughing at Joan Didion. Similar to older actresses movies, the plot relies on some misplaced sense of everlasting sisterhood. However, these Women seem less than likely to have such a bond other than showing up and cashing their checks from this mediocre movie.
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- Genre: Comedy
- Country: United States
- Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
- Cast: Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally
