There's not really anything new in Quiz Lady. If you've ever seen a comedy before (and I don't even watch a lot of modern comedies), every joke here will feel telegraphed a mile away. Nothing surprises you.
The tricky thing about a road movie is that you really have to fall in love with the characters, and I didn't here. Sandra Oh's character is so obnoxious and selfish that I couldn't warm up to her even after the gooey "heartfelt" reconciliation. I mean, it's a really good performance by Oh, needless to say, but in service of what? She spends her entire life walking all over and manipulating other people and we're supposed to forgive her because we find out that ONE TIME she did ONE nice thing for her sister. The movie does so little to acknowledge her flaws that you wonder if her intrusive, overbearing, and entitled personality isn't being spun as some kind of twisted "girl power". Sort of that "Well guys get away with being aggressive jerks all the time, so it's empowering to flip the script and have the WOMAN be the awful one, right?" brand of feminism. I mean, yeah, her relationship with Awkwafina is better by the end of the movie, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge or attempt to make amends with anyone else she's hurt over the course of the past forty years. I get the feeling that by the end of the movie she's ready to snap back to her former personality and go on treating everybody else in the world like garbage.
Awkwafina's character is more sympathetic but pretty dull--her only real defining characteristics are that she's The Responsible One and that she's pretty much a trivia prodigy. She would have been a much more interesting character if she had been pursuing the quiz show of her own accord rather than simply being dragged through the movie by her controlling sister.
The supporting cast really buoys the movie--even if you get the feeling that the self-same movie that benefits from their presence is making fun of most of them. Sure, I'm supposed to give Sandra Oh's awful character the grace of seeing her as a fully-dimensional human being, but the guy running the Bed and Breakfast who enjoys dressing as Benjamin Franklin? It's okay to portray him as a ridiculous geeky idiot who's too dumb to cosplay correctly. Do you want me to feel compassion for your characters or not, movie? Holland Taylor is a standout as Awkwafina's miserable duplex neighbor, Jason Schwartzman goes the Justin Long route of flipping the "adorkable dude" archetype on its head by exposing its toxicity, and Will Ferrell brings a warmth and humanity to a talk show host who, on paper, is a pretty boring guy. And the cameo by "Alan Cumming" steals the movie.
The dishwater roteness of the script subsides in the third act as Awkwafina makes it to the game show. This is where the movie really picks up and the comedy starts to feel more organic to the plot rather than simply shoved on top of it. I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it actually explored the subculture of quiz show fanaticism--I mean, it is called Quiz Lady, after all, so it's annoying that Can't Stop the Quiz is pretty much relegated to the role of glorified MacGuffin and deus ex machina.
The tricky thing about a road movie is that you really have to fall in love with the characters, and I didn't here. Sandra Oh's character is so obnoxious and selfish that I couldn't warm up to her even after the gooey "heartfelt" reconciliation. I mean, it's a really good performance by Oh, needless to say, but in service of what? She spends her entire life walking all over and manipulating other people and we're supposed to forgive her because we find out that ONE TIME she did ONE nice thing for her sister. The movie does so little to acknowledge her flaws that you wonder if her intrusive, overbearing, and entitled personality isn't being spun as some kind of twisted "girl power". Sort of that "Well guys get away with being aggressive jerks all the time, so it's empowering to flip the script and have the WOMAN be the awful one, right?" brand of feminism. I mean, yeah, her relationship with Awkwafina is better by the end of the movie, but she doesn't seem to acknowledge or attempt to make amends with anyone else she's hurt over the course of the past forty years. I get the feeling that by the end of the movie she's ready to snap back to her former personality and go on treating everybody else in the world like garbage.
Awkwafina's character is more sympathetic but pretty dull--her only real defining characteristics are that she's The Responsible One and that she's pretty much a trivia prodigy. She would have been a much more interesting character if she had been pursuing the quiz show of her own accord rather than simply being dragged through the movie by her controlling sister.
The supporting cast really buoys the movie--even if you get the feeling that the self-same movie that benefits from their presence is making fun of most of them. Sure, I'm supposed to give Sandra Oh's awful character the grace of seeing her as a fully-dimensional human being, but the guy running the Bed and Breakfast who enjoys dressing as Benjamin Franklin? It's okay to portray him as a ridiculous geeky idiot who's too dumb to cosplay correctly. Do you want me to feel compassion for your characters or not, movie? Holland Taylor is a standout as Awkwafina's miserable duplex neighbor, Jason Schwartzman goes the Justin Long route of flipping the "adorkable dude" archetype on its head by exposing its toxicity, and Will Ferrell brings a warmth and humanity to a talk show host who, on paper, is a pretty boring guy. And the cameo by "Alan Cumming" steals the movie.
The dishwater roteness of the script subsides in the third act as Awkwafina makes it to the game show. This is where the movie really picks up and the comedy starts to feel more organic to the plot rather than simply shoved on top of it. I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it actually explored the subculture of quiz show fanaticism--I mean, it is called Quiz Lady, after all, so it's annoying that Can't Stop the Quiz is pretty much relegated to the role of glorified MacGuffin and deus ex machina.
