'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot' is a muddled war comedy with moments of brilliance amidst its own uncertainty.

In Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, comedy darling Tina Fey plays a harried war reporter sent to Afghanistan in 2003, where her coverage of the war becomes increasingly ignored, much like the war itself, in the wake of other more exciting stories (as in Iraq). Whiskey Tango Foxtrot represents a departure for Fey, whose previous vehicles were merely cashing in on her success with 30 Rock, a show that, while never commanding big ratings, garnered an avid cult following and oodles of critical praise and awards.

My feelings about this movie vacillated almost from the beginning. The movie opens in 2006 during a rager of a party, where Fey’s character, Kim Baker, curses like an Afghani sailor (if such a thing existed in this landlocked desert country). The subtitles reveal the depth of her knowledge after having spent three years in this country, which has somehow, strangely, become a home to her. But Kim is an utterly ambivalent character, which is one of the movie’s biggest problems.

Kim’s ambivalence makes sense. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot effectively and correctly explores the war in Afghanistan as a complicated, often confusing project, and a mission that becomes increasingly more complicated by our involvement in Iraq. Kim jumps at the chance when she’s initially offered the job because she’s desperate for a change. As Kim puts it, she’s afraid she’ll become “an ottoman” in her office. What’s more, she’s involved in a comfortable relationship that’s become a little too comfortable. She and her significant other exchange brief words at the airport (he’s just returning from a business trip, and she’s departing for what she thinks will be three months in the Middle East). Her boyfriend suggests a quickie in the mens’ room, which Kim rejects, and that’s almost the last we see of him. (He turns up in a few abortive Skype conversations, marred by the bad internet connection.)

Kim’s arrival in Afghanistan only further expands her feelings of ambivalence. Afghanistan, we’re told, is a country that literally has shit in the air, but for Kim, it represents purpose and career advancement and the chance to cover something real and important. She befriends a British reporter named Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie), who requests that Kim hand over her stacked bodyguard Nic, for sex. Kim is shocked that anyone would ask her permission, and still more shocked when Robbie’s character appraises Kim’s sexual capital: “You’re probably a 7 in New York, but you’re a 10 in Afghanistan.” Kim’s baffled reply: “What are you, then, a 14?” (Robbie is, after all, the girl who explained boring housing market terms to us in a bubble bath in The Big Short.)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a fascinating movie, but it doesn’t always work. The directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, have a habit of introducing interesting scenes, scenes which might explore characters in great depth, and then short-handing them. We’re never sure if this is supposed to be a buddy movie about Kim’s and Tanya’s friendship as two reporters who find that misery truly does love company. The directors provide big moments in their friendship (a near-death experience, an act of journalistic betrayal), but these events are the sum total of their relationship: There’s no connective tissue to imbue these big moments with dramatic weight.

Part of the problem is that directors never know what to do with Tina Fey in movies. They seem to be stuck because of her character on 30 Rock. That show gave Fey just the right kind of character: the vaguely desperate, almost has-been, funny-smart nerd Liz Lemon. But Fey’s transition into movies has not been as successful. Whiskey does avoid the usual temptations of making Fey a desperate single woman looking for love (as in 2013’s Admission), and her romance with an Irish photographer named Iain (played by Martin Freeman), has moments of charm. (Iain first appears sleazy and singularly interested in sex, but he develops into a more interesting character.) But Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a sort of a drama that’s confused by its star, a comic actress. The whole movie feels muddled and strained, and at times I couldn’t wait for it to end.

What’s more, the directors have fitted an existential and unapologetically wistful movie into a cookie cutter format. It explores questions of great nuance, but then reverts to its genre conventions, like the flawed romance between Fey and Freeman which must be redeemed. (But, to give the movie some credit, it never stops dealing with ambiguities. When Kim visits a soldier who lost both legs, she's overwhelmed with the feeling that her reporting brought about his injuries; he's able to see it differently though: it happened. It's past. Accept it and move on.)

The movie gets Afghanistan right in the sense that it never quite figures the place out. It echoes are real problems interacting with Middle Eastern countries: We don’t get their culture. Kim makes a number of rookie gaffes, like forgetting her head-dress or entering a gathering of angry men in the street, with camera in hand. But even she’s making foolish mistakes, she’s also making bold choices. Perhaps the most poignantly funny scene is when Kim informs a marine general (played by Billy Bob Thornton) that the well they keep digging for a small village, one that keeps getting mysteriously sabotaged, is actually inhibiting the social life of the village women, whose only time to interact with each other occurs during their walks to the river for water. Kim becomes their ally in that moment, and in turn she becomes what she’s wanted to be for the whole movie: necessary.

This movie never figures out what it is. It’s a curious failure, and as such, a mirror of our Middle Eastern entanglements. But sometimes failures are more fascinating than successes, and in its own way, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot achieves moments of comedic brilliance and insight that make it impossible to dismiss. 

With Christopher Abbott, Alfred Molina, Sheila Vand, and Steve Peacocke. Written by Robert Carlock; based on Kim Barker’s memoir The Taliban Shuffle. 

You should probably lower your expectations of 'Sisters'.

Sisters, the latest movie pairing of TV stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, is too bawdy for people who loved Baby Mama and too conventional to really sizzle as an R-rated party comedy. The film, which was directed by Jason Moore (Pitch Perfect) and written by SNL veteran Paula Pell, is banking on the hope that your love for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will somehow make you love this movie, whether it’s good or not. Sadly, Sisters is overall a disappointing effort. And it looked promising from the trailers. Sisters does offer some laughs, but just as many moments fall flat. In that sense, it’s like any episode of Saturday Night Live. (And it will probably be better a few years from now while you’re flipping channels late one night.)

At this point, the rapport between Fey and Poehler isn’t enough on which to build a movie. (But it was enough to get my expectations extremely high.) I love both 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation very much, and I love imagining that Amy and Tina are best friends, and that they are a kind of 21st-century Mary and Rhoda, only they aren’t fictional characters. But the beloved shows of these two very funny women aren’t merely based on the personalities of their stars. It’s good writing that lets Tina Fey and Amy Poehler shine, and Sisters feels underdeveloped. Even the characters aren’t particularly fresh: Fey plays the older sister Kate, a party monster and perpetual screw-up (a personality that is, from what I know, very far from the actual Tina Fey); and Poehler, also playing someone quite different from herself, is the always dependable, competent younger sister Maura.

The film mostly takes place in Orlando, where Kate and Maura return to their childhood home only to find that their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest, who have far too little screen time) have sold it. The girls are tasked with cleaning out their bedroom (which apparently was once two separate rooms before they knocked down the adjoining wall). Devastated by the news that the house they grew up in will no longer be accessible, Kate and Maura vow to throw one last party and invite all their friends from high school.

Much of the humor focuses on aging and nostalgia. The girls’ room is a virtual time capsule, taking us back to every forgotten pop culture object of the 1980s. You get the feeling that the creators of this (probably with help from the stars) simply wanted an excuse to film all the things they loved as teenagers. There’s a montage of the women reliving their adolescence (the room is pretty great as a shrine to teenage girls circa 1986), but the funniest moment is in the trailer, when Poehler stands against her Xanadu poster with a blow drier pointed at her head to give her the Olivia Newton John flowing-hair effect. 

Even the conversations in this movie are often about the past. This feels like old hat, simply the Tina and Amy version of whatever other recent comedies have focused on characters stuck in their teen years. Comedies right now love critiquing characters who refuse to grow up--at the end, after they’ve basically allowed their characters to be utter children for nearly two hours. Sisters does the same: Kate and Maura cannot get over the past, and it’s pretty clear from their guests that everyone has calcified into some banal generic grown-up version of her or his formerly unique self. (This pro-youth propaganda, I’m sure, isn’t something that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler really wish to perpetuate.)

Sisters is about reconciling one’s youthful energy of the past with one’s tired present defeatism. But none of the guests has the energy to re-conjure the madcap, orgiastic hijinks of their youth. Their friends want a Big Chill-esque chat session, but the ladies are thinking Animal House-style rager. (One of their sleazier friends--played by John Leguizamo--summons his drug dealer, played by John Cena, whose assorted powders and pills, etc. help liven up the proceedings.)

Good party scenes are particularly challenging filmmaking feats. One of the best party scenes occurs in the otherwise overrated Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That sequence bubbles with energy, and Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, mostly an annoying affectation of a character, crystallizes into something charming and clever in those moments. Valley Girl, a minor 80s classic, has a pretty good extended party scene too, although it’s not quite as well-shaped as the one from Tiffany’s. Both of them feel of their time: we become flies on the wall imbibing the flavor of the 1960s or the 1980s, respectively. These scenes build to something (whether it’s a fight or a kiss or some little bit of slapstick), and in a way those party sequences are like mini-narratives inside a larger story. Sisters is one long party full of comic actors trying very hard to be funny and sometimes succeeding. There’s less shaping and more, “let’s throw this up and see if it sticks.” And there are plenty of sticky things happening in Sisters. You can go whole scenes without laughing, or you might get a solid belly laugh here and there. Perhaps it will depend largely on your mood and your expectations.

This is also the raunchiest collaboration between Fey and Poehler. The guests let their freak flags fly with a little help from cocaine. For some inexplicable reason, director Jason Moore is overly fond one one particularly grating character named Alex (played by current SNL cast member Bobby Moynahan), who screams unfunny jokes at the camera even before he begins inhaling cocaine like it’s air. At different times we see Alex pleasuring himself with food and then later with one of the Vietnamese salon girls that Maura invited to the party. There’s a particularly painful to watch scene involving actor Ike Barinholtz (playing Maura’s love interest), his rectum, and a ballerina music box. Unfortunately, that gag is ruined by the movie trailer, as is the great throwaway line uttered by Tina Fey (to John Cena’s character): “You’re the type of bad-ass that I was susceptible to.” (John Cena, incidentally, may be the breakout star of 2015 what with his surprisingly endearing and very funny performance in Trainwreck and his comic relief here in Sisters.)

Other comic stars tag along for the fun: Maya Rudolph (the foil, a high school rival of Kate’s), Samantha Bee, Kate McKinnon, Rachel Dratch, Britt Lower, and Chris Parnell, to name a few. But comedy can’t be forced. Sisters feels like the cinematic equivalent of constipation: the whole movie is exhausted and red-faced. And it may be better if you lower your expectations.

This Is Where I Leave You

Although there are moments when This Is Where I Leave You is charming, funny, interesting, even poignant, it’s generally a mess. In fact the movie is such a mess that it's tempting to think that the makers confused narrative drama with dramatic structure, and therefore found it perfectly natural to let the structure be as loose as everything else in the movie. There are insane things that happen in this movie, and they seem to be happening for the sheer insanity of it. It’s about four adult siblings who come together after the death of their father. The matriarch—played by Jane Fonda—gathers them together in her large New England home for Shiva, the seven-day period in the Jewish faith during which family members officially mourn the passing of a loved one.

The film has an attractive cast: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, Ben Schwartz, and of course the great Jane Fonda. But in order to have so many big names and big stars, you need a lot of big parts. And that’s probably where This Is Where I Leave You loses its way. It has too many characters, all of whom are required to have multiple scenes of inner-crises spilling out into the open.

For instance, Jason Bateman’s character, Judd, who walks in on his wife and his boss during a vigorous round of love-making in his own bed. (The wife later finds out she’s pregnant, but that it’s Judd’s baby, not the boss’s.) Wendy (Fey) is the bossy big sister who possesses a sometimes charming, sometimes grating, know-it-all quality. She too has problems: namely a husband who’s too busy with work to pay attention to his wife and children. Paul (Stoll) is the responsible eldest sibling. He and his wife Anne (Kathryn Hahn) are having trouble conceiving. And then there’s Philip (Driver), the baby sibling who never grew up. The actors are adept enough to make it work at least half the time, but these are pretty tried-and-true character types torn right out of the pages of a sitcom script.

That’s another problem. This is a sitcom comedy-drama movie, and it represents an increasingly distinct genre of films that typically have mixed results. They do give traditionally comedic actors a chance to cry on screen and look puffy and unattractive. And, like any well-behaved sitcom, the serious moments are always punctuated with something funny. It’s not wrong to do that, but it also seems sort of cheap to stifle every dramatic moment with an easy laugh (frequently derived from Jane Fonda’s enormous breast implants, which trigger intense anxiety in all of her children, especially as she presses their faces against her plastic bosoms while consoling them, as she is wont to do). Then again, these dramatic moments aren’t so important or revealing or original that they can’t be improved with a little comedy.

Actually, the saving grace in this film is the dippy character played by Rose Byrne. She’s a girl from Judd’s past, and their relationship is rekindled in the usual ways you expect from this kind of thing: boy meets girl, boy remembers girl from adolescent years, boy and girl have good memories of each other, boy shows up at girl’s work—a skating rink—where they skate and talk while Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” spills over them from the speakers above. It’s not a particularly original romance, but it’s sort of enchanting to see Jason Bateman and Rose Byrne just hanging out, especially when the rest of the movie feels like a competition to see how many problems can be crammed into two hours of film.

This Is Where I Leave You isn’t really offensive in its quest to be the latest dramedy (or a light-hearted version of August Osage County), but it is disappointing. The director, Shawn Levy, and the screenwriter, Jonathan Tropper (who adapted his own novel), seem to be clutching at fragments of two different genres and then cramming them onto the same canvas. It helps if you’re a fan of Jason Bateman and Tina Fey, although it may not help to see them wasted in middling material. But Bateman carries the film well, and Fey is capable of real pathos. It’s perhaps most depressing to see Jane Fonda turning such tricks in a movie theater. She’s funny, but she hardly gets to do anything that isn’t surface-level, lowest common denominator humor.

Adam Driver has probably the most appealing part, but then that makes sense: he’s the stereotypical fun-loving youngest sibling, the one who’s also a perpetual screw-up. And of course, he’s vested with lots of unintentional bits of wisdom, all of them obliviously aimed at teaching the other siblings that their lives are just as messy as his. But if the film weren’t so careful in its adherence to certain character types, it might be funnier, more inventive. As it is, it’s a predictable, sometimes even boring, family drama that’s bolstered by the appeal of its considerable talent.

Admission

I'm happy to live in a world where Tina Fey is making movies and TV shows, because it's a much funnier, more interesting world than it would be without her. Admission, Fey's latest movie, is that way too: the movie would be less funny and less interesting if she weren't in it. More to the point, it's the kind of romantic comedy that seems tailored to fit Fey's personality--or at least the personality she projects into characters like Liz Lemon, her character from the just-ended sitcom 30 Rock. (I'll refrain from inserting a comment like "30 Rock is the best situational comedy in the last ten years, possibly the last 20.")

Fey plays slight variations of her Liz Lemon character in movies like Baby Mama (2008) and Admission. They're always women who are successful but unhappy. They've avoided the pitfalls of marriage and family only to find another pitfall in their careers. In this latest vehicle, Fey plays Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton University. (Something about the name 'Portia' seems like an inside joke.) Portia isn't single. She's been living with a Princeton English professor (who thinks that reading lines from Canterbury Tales in Middle English are a good way to spend an evening). She isn't unhappy (she has a rewarding job at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and she's one of the ones who says "yes" or "no" to a student's application). And she isn't worried about having children. These non-problems only become problems after she meets John (Paul Rudd), a teacher at an experimental school in New Hampshire who's trying to get one of his students into Princeton.

In true romantic comedy fashion, Admission hinges upon a series of unlikely plot devices, such as the teenage boy, who Portia learns might just be the son she had in college and gave up for adoption when he was still a baby. This hypothetical pushes a lot of maternal buttons that Portia didn't know existed in her, and she finds herself doing all of the irrational things parents do to help their children: The very things she's encouraged parents of college applicants not to do.

I really enjoyed Admission. The writing (it was adapted from Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel by Karen Croner) somehow balances clever with commercial, which makes Admission a surprisingly refreshing comedy. It goes in unexpected directions, and requires more from Tina Fey as an actress than her previous movie roles have. She pulls off the dramatic scenes convincingly. But it's her delivery of the jokes that sells this movie. Every one of her throwaway lines seems so fragile, so destined for failure if even one thing is off, be it the timing or the cadence or the facial expression. Yet Fey locates and projects the humor in lines that wouldn't necessarily look funny on the screen. (Except that more likely than not, Croner was familiar with her acting enough to imagine the lines working. This assumes that the movie was written with Tina Fey in mind, of course.)

Lily Tomlin co-stars as Portia's mom. She's an eccentric loner who was a major voice of the feminist movement during the 1970s. She's put a lot of pressure on Portia to be fiercely independent of men, and as Portia treads the ground forged by her mother, she begins to suspect that perhaps it's not as fulfilling as she thought it would be. Tomlin is a delightful comedian, and it's especially fun to see her paired with Fey. Paul Rudd is surprisingly likable in this movie. He's finally been cast in a movie in which he doesn't have to be a jerk, even slightly. He's just charming and even foolishly passionate about the world. It's a refreshing change. With Michael Sheen, Wallace Shawn, Nat Wolff, Travaris Spears, and Gloria Reuben. Directed by Paul Weitz. ★★½