Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

In 2011, Kris­ten Wiig and Annie Mumo­lo con­quered the box office and land­ed a joint Oscar nom­i­na­tion for writ­ing Brides­maids, a post-Apa­tow bud­dy pic­ture found­ed on loose impro­vi­sa­tion and female cama­raderie. It’s easy to imag­ine the amply deserved career where­in they spent the 2010s repeat­ing their great­est suc­cess, either to fab­u­lous or dimin­ish­ing returns, but that’s not how the fol­low­ing decade played out.

Due to a com­bi­na­tion of the tal­ent tak­ing time to pur­sue inde­pen­dent inter­ests, stu­dios shy­ing away from mid-bud­get com­e­dy, long-form absur­dism being most­ly out of fash­ion at the mul­ti­plex, and sure­ly some sex­ism in there some­where, their fol­low-up Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar has had a long, dif­fi­cult road to its uncer­e­mo­ni­ous release.

Lion­s­gate has damned this won­der­ful­ly eccen­tric pas­sion project with a stream­ing-only debut all but hid­den by the lack of a mean­ing­ful ad cam­paign, though one can see why the stu­dio may have antic­i­pat­ed a knee-jerk revul­sion from view­ers expect­ing anoth­er down-the-mid­dle crowd-pleaser.

Where Brides­maids was broad­ly acces­si­ble and ground­ed in a plau­si­ble human­i­ty, Wiig and Mumolo’s lat­est is pitched at an eccen­tric, spe­cif­ic reg­is­ter and lib­er­at­ed by its own com­mit­ment to silli­ness. Like its spir­i­tu­al pre­de­ces­sors Hot Rod or Pop­star: Nev­er Stop Nev­er Stop­ping – or, to go back a ways fur­ther, the exquis­ite­ly doofy Chris Elliott vehi­cle Cab­in Boy – a fate of obscu­ri­ty and even­tu­al cult embrace awaits this screw-loose odd­i­ty. That it got made at all is the real vic­to­ry here.

Wiig and Mumo­lo play life­long besties Star (short for Star­bara) and Barb (just Barb), home­body res­i­dents of Soft Rock, Nebras­ka with social lives that amount to lit­tle more than the week­ly meet­ings of their six-per­son ​“Talk­ing Club”. Tired of eat­ing the same old putrid hot dog soup and eager for a new adven­ture, they pack their bags – cook­ie jar, check, freeze-dried cheese piz­za, check, evening culottes, check – and head to the colour-sat­u­rat­ed Florid­i­an oasis of Vista Del Mar.

Their zany hijinks put some zing back into fortysome­thing fem­i­nin­i­ty, but the arrival of the hunky Edgar (Jamie Dor­nan, in an inge­nious cast­ing coup play­ing on the 50 Shades star’s image of sex­u­al awak­en­ing for repressed women in mid­dle age) tests the bonds of their friend­ship. Except he’s only there to car­ry out the orders of an albi­no supervil­lain­ess (also Wiig, look­ing like the lovechild of Edna Mode and Pow­der) bent on destroy­ing the town’s Seafood Jam fes­ti­val, where she was humil­i­at­ed and shot out of a can­non all those years ago.

While the unhinged plot has suf­fi­cient emo­tion­al sub­stance to feel like more than a col­lec­tion of sketch­es, it’s main­ly a pre­tence for flur­ries of sight gags and the non-stop schtick from a duo unique­ly keyed in to a shared fre­quen­cy. Mumo­lo and Wiig have been hon­ing their chem­istry since their days ris­ing through the ranks of improv troupe The Groundlings, and their fine-tuned tim­ing makes all the dif­fer­ence between the humour of annoy­ance and just being annoying.

Deliv­er­ing punch lines in per­fect melod­ic uni­son, they both fit snug­ly into an off-kil­ter cin­e­mat­ic dimen­sion of impromp­tu musi­cal num­bers, inad­vis­ably pierced labia, and one ani­ma­tron­ic crab named ​“Mor­gan Freemond” that speaks with the voice of Mor­gan Freeman.

Des­tined for end­less quot­ing and rewatch­es from an inevitable fan­base, the film proud­ly occu­pies a self-fash­ioned niche, even if the charm being exud­ed may seem irre­sistible to those already amenable. If there’s any good­ness left in this world, how­ev­er, these diag­noses of focused appeal will be off-base. Like Barb and Star them­selves, befriend­ing every­one who cross­es their path, it’s so win­ning­ly ebul­lient and weird that it can pull in any­body with its cheery Mid­west­ern looni­ness and make them into an instant convert.