It’s funny how Hollywood tries to update movies whose primary audience is an adult audience, like comedies when they want morewith a cast of stars from other times, and of which the youngest, perhaps, in one of them, recognizes only Mary Steenburgen, because she was in the third of Back to the Future.
What renews or innovates here does not happen through the way of narrating or the shots, but through the dialogues that make the four protagonists say, most often charged with an explicit double meaning.
How funny.
This is the sequel to when they want. And if before they were all over 60 – and we were generous – now they have ailments of all kinds. They are always the same friends who have been meeting once a month for 45 years to discuss and talk about the book that one has proposed, and the others read too. I’m Diana (Diane Keaton), they lived (Jane Fonda), Sharon (Candice Bergen) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen), played by Oscar winners or Oscar nominees, not exactly for these films.
Four friends in a pandemic
when they want (The Book Club) premiered in 2018, and the four friends received something of a shock when, at their book club, they addressed 50 shades of Grey.
The film doesn’t get off to a bad start, when it shows the four of them maintaining their reading habit, but in times of the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone closed in their own home – luxurious, of course – chatting on Zoom.
If they had gone on Zoom maybe not only would they have saved a few million dollars in production, tickets for Italy and more, and who knows where it would have gone when they want more.
Because you don’t want more from the audience, about half an hour after the screening.
But something has to happen, and that something happens to Vivian, who, when they can finally meet in person, shows off the engagement ring Arthur (Don Johnson) gave her. And since the quartet had a trip to Italy, they organize a kind of bachelorette party with a tour that will take them from the city of Rome to Venice and finally to Tuscany.
Once again it is Diane (Diane Keaton) who brings the voice of the story. She is not seen in close-up, but her voice is recognizable. Unless they pick, or buy tickets without knowing, a show dubbed into Spanish, and then yeah, they better read this review because they won’t know who’s talking outside.
Bill Holderman, who as director had only made the original film, when they wanthe rewrote the script with Erin Simms, and if they weren’t funny before, time hasn’t made them better.
There roam the gentlemen of the cast, which in addition to Don Johnson, includes an octogenarian Giancarlo Giannini -well, they travel to Italy- in a lousy cop role, Craig T. Nelson (from Poltergeist) and Andy García, who you will remember was Diane Keaton’s partner in the first.
And 30 years ago it was his grandson, a The Godfather III. In the past, sometimes, it was better.
“When They Want More”
Comedy. USA, 2023. Original title: “Book Club: The Next Chapter”. 107′, Atp, From: Bill Holderman. With: Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenburgen, Candice Bergen. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto, Cinemark Puerto Madero, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter, Cinépolis Recoleta and Pilar.
Source: Clarin
