Mack & Rita

Our ladies group got together for lunch and then saw this movie. It did not take long to realize the indigestion we were getting wasn't from lunch, but it was this lifeless and dead movie.

Diane Keaton is usually a good actress who brings a lot of character and laughs to any movie... but she has lost everything with this movie!

The "so-called" funny remarks fell silent with everyone in the theater, and the timing was horrible.

We wasted our time, we wasted our good hard-earned money, and along with the over-priced concessions, it was a costly dead afternoon!

A few days after we saw it, we noticed it had been removed from the listing of movies at the theater... well, the writing was on the wall for this one! Good bye and good riddance!

Save yourself. Stay home. Watch the grass grow. Go see a different movie. Try a new restaurant. But DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE. I warned you...go see where the crawdads sing.

Another Diane Keaton movie that is so predictable and cliche'. She is playing the same Diane Keaton again, as we have seen in so many movies over the past 40 years. The clothes change slightly, but the gestures, expressions, laugh, and just about everything else is just so unremarkably the same. Bless her heart.

Could've been titled 30 going on 70. Same premise as 13 Going on 30, BIG, Freaky Friday...

I havent seen this many perfectly good jokes fail to land since VIBES. Why? Bad chemistry, poor timing? Cast is fine, script is good, but by fifteen minutes in i thought so many movies are made but not released - WHY NOT THIS? Ah well, it looked nice.

Fifteen minutes in: "Oh. So it's 'Big' or '13 going on 30' meets 'Freak Friday.' Got it."

The cast is having a good time. I love the costume design, and the hair and makeup work. The production design and art direction are pretty swell. There are themes here about being true to oneself, and the shallowness of social media and "influencers"; far less well articulated are any Big Ideas about treating the elderly well, and not talking down to them, or some such that the movie barely touches upon. The screenplay can claim some minor cleverness and mild, lighthearted humor. It's well made from a technical standpoint, including visual effects, editing, and cinematography, even if such elements are sometimes employed to ends that are just overdone.

I'd like to have more to say about 'Mack & Rita,' and specifically, something more substantive. This, however, is not a movie of substance - at least, none that we haven't seen before, and none that we can't predict nearly from the very start. There are also times when the feature works extra hard to avoid substance and just be as bombastic as it can, except the results of such instances are mostly not fun or funny, just overcooked or altogether obnoxious. (Like, really obnoxious; the first point of comparison to come to mind was John Leguizamo's 1997 misstep 'The pest,' except without the deliberate offensiveness.) Alternatively, the last scene, that tries to wrap up the story in a nutshell of whatever substance was previously lacking, is simply too drawn out.

This isn't to say that it's bad, or dull. It's not! It's really not! I do like this; it's passably entertaining, and everyone put in a lot of hard work on it. Only - it's just not anything special, and it doesn't have any especial spark to make it pop. No doubt many other viewers will get much more out of 'Mack & Rita'; I'm glad for them, and they should. For the average viewer, however, this is something very light and fluffy to watch on a very lazy day, if at all. Maybe that's all it needs to be, but I still rather wish it were something more remarkable.