Wild Oats

This film offers two good performances amidst a terrible screenplay and annoying characters. Shirley MacLaine and Jessica Lange play longtime friends who hightail it to the Canary Islands (where the entire film was shot) after MacLaine receives an erroneous insurance check for $5M. They get makeovers and meet up with a vague and really annoying man (Billy Connolly) who squires the ladies to a casino where MacLaine wins a bundle. In the meantime an insurance investigator (Howard Hesseman) drags MacLaine's daughter (a dour Demi Moore) along as he chases them down. MacLaine and Lange keep things afloat up to this point, but the already-bad screenplay takes another bad turn and becomes ludicrous. The two Oscar-winning stars are great fun, but the other characters as written are too annoying for the actors to salvage them. This film was in development for years and has a long list of actors attached to various roles. Could have been a lot of fun.

This charming well written comedy caper could easily have been painful and unfunny but it is actually quite good and laugh out loud funny in parts. The 2 actresses Jessica Lange and Shirley Maclaine are so good they are watchable and never cringe inducing. It's good to see Jessica doing comedy again - she has been in horror for the last few years with AHS so it's nice to see what a good comedienne she is. Shirley is quite nimble for her age - she is over 80 and can still do comedy convincingly.

A widow gets a mistaken windfall payout and sets off on a exotic trip with her best friend. Some stand out moments include crassness of people at the funeral. The part dealing with calling the insurance company rings familiar for many.

The location in Gran Canaria is quite exotic and the resort is attractive.

Worth a watch.

MacLaine and Lange are terrific together. It wouldn't seem so given their individual careers and past performances. The movie itself is very nice. There are contrivances. But, a lot of movies do these days. The two lead actresses have great chemistry together. I would hope that more people will find the movie, and enjoy it. I was a little ahead of the story at one point, and hoping my thoughts would not come true. But, they did. Still, by that point, I'd bought into the movie. In other reviews, they talk about the script. The other characters could have been better written and fleshed out. So, I agree somewhat with the negative reviews. I would recommend the movie as something nice to watch on an afternoon.

I was so happy to see a movie with such a fantastic cast of old people - I especially love Shirley MacLain and Billy Connolly, and the rest of the cast was also good. However, the script went from mediocre to really bad, the plot was worse, and the whole thing nose-dived in the second half. Which is a shame, it had such potential. No wonder it never opened in the theaters. I wish they would redo it, write a decent plot with an improved script, and re-release it next year. They would only have to do the second half. The movie starts out with MacLain and Lange at the funeral of MacLain's husband. It goes on to show the widow receive a falsely made out check from his life insurance. One of the best scenes in the whole movie is her calling the insurance company to try to straighten out the mistake. Then the story already starts to go downhill. Why doesn't she just deposit the check without worrying about being arrested? Or just send it back and ask for a correct one with a payment of $50,000 instead of 5 million? Everything is overdone with no reason behind it. And it just gets steadily worse with very little good stuff in between. It is not even worth watching for the actors, as the script is abominable.

Eva Fenton (Shirley MacLaine) buries her husband as her best friend Maddie Reynolds (Jessica Lange) hysterically cries at the funeral. She's alone except for her daughter Crystal (Demi Moore) who is looking to sell her home. She is shocked when her husband's $50k life insurance arrives with an erroneous $5 million payout. Maddie's husband ran off with his young secretary and she's sick. Eva decides to take Maddie on a vacation to the Canary Islands where Eva falls for Chandler (Billy Connolly). Meanwhile, insurance investigator Alvin Vespucci (Howard Hesseman) and Crystal chase them to retrieve the money.

Andy Tennant may not be a top level director but the flaws here are mostly due to the writing. MacLaine and Lange try their best but they can't overcome the weak writing. It has some bad sitcom writing. When it tries to be broad, it doesn't know how to do it right. The only saving grace is the legendary actors on the screen. I stayed with this for them but I was not rewarded.