Three years ago, deep in the bleak pandemic winter, we were blessed with a strange, movie-shaped gift. Starring and written by two of our most talented comedians, it was at once satirical, sincere, good-hearted and neon-colored. It took place mostly on a Florida beach. There were some dance numbers, a remix of “My Heart Will Go On,” a bunch of colorful sugar-bomb cocktails and an obsessive attention to culottes. The jokes came fast and furiously. A crab talked in a voice that sounded like Morgan Freeman. It was, in a word, perfect.
I’m writing, of course, of “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” one of the more criminally underrated films in recent years. That fate was mostly inevitable; theaters weren’t open in many markets in February 2021, and matters like “time” and “release schedules” were nebulous, mushy concepts. The fact that “Barb and Star” was written by its leads, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, the same pair of friends who wrote the paradigm-shifting “Bridesmaids” 10 years earlier, somehow didn’t propel it into the spotlight. (We were all too busy obsessing over “WandaVision.”)
But I’ve found myself thinking about “Barb and Star” (available to buy or rent on most major platforms) in the years since, in part because of last year’s megahit “Barbie.” That movie’s greatest pleasure was its tone: zany, bright, heightened, self-aware, a little meta and very sweet. It had winking jokes and magical realism and a heartfelt message, and that made it feel fresh and unusual which, indeed, it was.
Crank up the “Barbie” tone by a factor of five, toss in a bag of glitter and a blue cocktail in a huge fishbowl, add just a tiny touch of raunch, and you get “Barb and Star.” The tale concerns the titular middle-aged Midwesterners, played by Mumolo and Wiig, best friends who live in Soft Rock, Neb., and work at Jennifer Convertibles — the couch store. Barb is a widow, and Star (short for “Starbara”) is divorced. They have identical poofy haircuts and they sleep in twin beds; they belong to a Talking Club run by an imperious woman (Vanessa Bayer) and have never really left their hometown.
But after an unfortunate layoff at Jennifer Convertibles, Barb and Star are inspired to do something unexpected to get their shimmer back. A chance encounter with a tanned acquaintance leads in one direction: a week in Vista Del Mar, Fla. What they don’t know is that Edgar (Jamie Dornan, transcendent) will be there too, at the behest of a villainess named Sharon Gordon Fisherman, also played by Wiig. He worships her; she barely tolerates him, but has promised that if they can pull off her evil plot, they can be an “official couple.” Which is all he wants in all the world.
That all happens in the first 20 minutes or so of the movie, and the rest is just an absurd, hilarious romp in the sunshine. Dornan — boyishly handsome, Irish, best known for “Fifty Shades of Grey” — is perhaps the most inspired casting of all time, a perfect avatar for middle-aged female desire. He can sing and dance, too, which he does brilliantly, in a forlorn love ballad addressed to sea gulls. Watching Ryan Gosling shimmy and pirouette through “I’m Just Ken,” I had one thought: Edgar walked so Ken could run.
Rewatching “Barb and Star” recently, I realized anew that what makes it so enjoyable — aside from its stars — is the zany pastiche quality of it all. This is not just a comedy. It’s not even just a buddy comedy. Suspended between kitsch and slapstick, it pays gently ironic homage to a host of genres: old James Bond movies, surfer party flicks, stoner movies, Busby Berkeley musicals and pretty much any movie where the gleefully clueless protagonists have to save the day. (There’s just a touch of a sex comedy in here too, though nothing graphic.)
That big mishmash is as intoxicating as the giant cocktail our heroines share with Edgar the night they meet at the hotel bar, as a lounge pianist sings in the background about his love of female anatomy. It’s the sort of film you used to stumble onto late at night on a throwback cable channel and wonder the next morning if there was something in that ice cream you had.
Most of all, it’s a movie filled with joy. Barb and Star have had harder lives than their bubbly personalities immediately let on. They’re the sort of characters that Hollywood movies have usually sidelined or skewered — not starlets, not sexpots, just women in culottes looking to have a nice time at the beach. They’re caricatures who are also curiously three-dimensional: women with exaggeratedly thick accents who are overjoyed at finding an in-flight magazine in the seat-back pocket, but also women with desires who are themselves desirable. They want love and sex, but also companionship, and to cool off in the pool, and seashell jewelry, and to imagine the life of a mermaid named Trish. That puts Barb and Star back in Barbie Land: they are women who were made for something, and they know it, and by golly they’re going to find it in the blissful sands of Vista Del Mar.
There’s no “Barbie” this summer. It’s been a strange season for movies. A release schedule normally loaded with big-budget bangers is feeling a bit skeletal, mostly a result of last year’s labor strikes and the long-tail fallout. But if that “Barbie” itch needs scratching, consider spending a couple of hours with Barb and Star — the funniest, most beautiful heroines whose favorite recipe is “hot dog soup” to ever grace the big — er — little screen.
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