The Fabulous 4 film assessment (2024)

The quartet on this movie is Susan Sarandon as Lou, an uptight, humorless cat woman and cardiac surgeon; Bette Midler as Marilyn, a rich latest widow who impulsively determined to get married once more two months after the dying of her husband of 48 years; Megan Mullally as Alice, a well-liked singer who’s perpetually tipsy, excessive on medication, or having intercourse with randos, typically suddenly; and Sheryl Lee Ralph as Kitty, a kind-hearted weed grower and mom of an grownup daughter who has all of the sudden develop into rigidly non secular. You’ll be able to glimpse Midler’s real-life daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, taking part in Marilyn’s daughter early within the movie.

Marilyn is staying in a beautiful mansion in Key West, the place Ernest Hemingway lived when he wrote two of his books, which we’re instructed so typically they could possibly be getting paid by the point out. She invitations Kitty and Alice to her marriage ceremony however doesn’t invite Lou as a result of they’ve been estranged for years. So Kitty and Alice inform Lou the sort of preposterous lie that solely works in painfully contrived screenplays: they do not point out Marilyn. They only say she has gained a six-toed cat from the Hemingway Home. 

When Lou finds out she’s been tricked, she agrees to remain. Nonetheless, she is clearly nonetheless in ache over the sense of betrayal by Marilyn, for causes telegraphed so unmistakably from her arrival in Key West that the final word reveal carries no weight. All through the journey, she retains working into a gaggle of 20-somethings she met on the aircraft and unintentionally turns into their badass supreme. 

Marilyn is so enthusiastic about her over-the-top marriage ceremony plans she barely notices that her pals assume she is excessive. For an additional a type of causes that solely works in painfully contrived screenplays, she doesn’t introduce her fiancé to her pals till the evening earlier than the marriage so there generally is a very predictable twist. However the 4 are too busy having wacky adventures. Lou makes use of a Kegel (pelvic ground) train ball Marilyn gave her as a slingshot to take out a bicycle thief!  Lou unintentionally unties the rope to the parasail as a result of she is hallucinating! Sure, it’s presupposed to be a humorous prank that Lou’s closest pals dose her with weed with out telling her. One other intended-to-be hilarious scene takes place in a strip membership, the place a star performer linked to one of many ladies is acknowledged when she sees the birthmark on his naked butt whereas he’s grinding on the bride-to-be.