Paste
The Fabulous Four Wastes Its Supergroup Cast, No Comics Needed
By B. Panther
To call something “fabulous” is to suggest a sense of grandeur. It is for when something is so extraordinary that we will tell stories of its wonder, and folks will scarce believe it ever really happened. If you call a film The Fabulous Four and recruit powerhouses Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph, it should be over the top—worthy of the word. The trouble is that director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s film feels small and filled with underhanded setups that aren’t worthy of its players. Her other films like The Dressmaker, How to Make an American Quilt and A Thousand Acres, are made up of mature, complex scenarios and emotionally nuanced dialogue, but The Fabulous Four has the stakes of an assisted living center pamphlet.
Like every other recent entry in the “book club cinema” canon, The Fabulous Four is first and foremost about its cast. It brings together female icons of the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and most of the film celebrates their mere presence on screen. Marilyn (Midler), Lou (Sarandon), Alice (Mullally) and Kitty (Ralph) have been friends since college. After nearly 50 years and a huge falling out, the old gang reunites in sunny Key West for Marilyn’s surprise second wedding. But hen parties in the heat never did run smoothly. Through a series of mildly amusing hijinks—thanks to some smuggled marijuana and a few Gen Z-snaps—the friends confront their lives and each other.
It’s devastating that the jokes barely elicit a chuckle. We have legends of comedy, but writers Ann Marie Allison and Jenna Milly don’t provide sturdy enough material for them to work with. Marilyn’s jokes are relegated to her struggle for relevance in the TikTok era. Kitty makes edibles and loves Jesus. Alice is a cynical, sexual singer. And then there’s poor Lou, who loves control and cats.
Sarandon is done quite a disservice in this film, and I’m not just talking about her wig. While certainly the most acclaimed dramatic actress of the bunch, Sarandon’s character is an overserious doctor with a chip on her shoulder. Lou is continuously meek and mild-mannered until a few of Kitty’s treats knock some perspective into her for a scene, or she knocks into a mysterious man (Bruce Greenwood). Instead of excavating rawer material that would give Sarandon a chance to complete a worthwhile arc of self-discovery, Allison and Milly saddle her with an unnecessary spinster story that only begins to unravel when she meets a man. In lesser hands, this wouldn’t hurt as much, but we know Sarandon is capable of so much more. There are glimpses of it in The Fabulous Four, most notably in her private scenes with Midler. As the two characters with the most history, Lou and Marilyn have the meatiest dialogue, which gives these accomplished actresses a few intimate moments to dig in their heels and churn out genuine pathos. The trouble is those moments are few and far between.
For her part, Midler turns in a performance we’re used to seeing from her. Marilyn is the vain and extravagant life of the party who clings to celebrity, so Midler shows off her brand of schtick through embarrassing TikToks, which look like they were designed by someone who has never seen a TikTok in their life. This is The Divine Miss M, yet we have her doing uncool dances in what looks like a Japanese photobooth commercial. She deserves better. Midler shines when given dialogue that lets her build to a punchline, explosion or emotional point. She gets a few emotional beats that bring a sudden human complexity crashing into an otherwise intangible fantasy playground. However, The Fabulous Four is too flighty to let her or any character feel like they have a history or a pulse.
Sheryl Lee Ralph is also in this movie. While she looks great in penis-shaped glasses, her character is an awkward hodgepodge of fiction and drawn-from-life qualities, leaning into Ralph’s faith. Kitty is a biologist turned weed farmer who is also Christian—but a good Christian. She’s not a bad Christian like her daughter, who is cultish and intolerant. After Kitty’s supply is used for its desired plot point, it’s more or less cast off in favor of painting Kitty as the saintly woman who models the liberal walk of Jesus in the sea of white Key West. When not rushing through her hurried bits of screentime, Kitty is just…there. The Dreamgirl has the sleepiest role, leaving Ralph with little to do besides witnessing Mullally’s more exciting antics.
And god bless Megan Mullally. Whether she improvised her dialogue or found a way to zero in on its intent, she found a way to make her character the most consistently entertaining in the film. Alice knows exactly who she is, so Mullally gets to chill and soak up every moment with her self-assurance. She picks up the littlest cues and makes them sing. And sing she does! She sings more than Bette Midler in this movie. In this cast of hams, Mullally is honey-glazed. She’s the sweet, salty treat that nails the tone The Fabulous Four should have been luxuriating in the whole time.
Instead, The Fabulous Four plays out like an undressed salad paid for by the Key West tourism board, though it is ironic that most of the fun is because of drugs they smuggle into the island. It’s a tossed mess of bland or expired tropes about older women with little of the attractive, darker contours that have made previous Moorhouse films exciting to watch. This cast is packed with intelligent, gutsy women who all have demonstrated a gift for outrageousness, yet the film barely registers above a popped balloon. 80 for Brady gave enough yardage for its actresses to run. Book Club and its sequel felt like we’d turned a different chapter by the end. If you’re using “fabulous” to mean fable-like, then The Fabulous Four is in fact fabulous—in that we’ve seen it in too many other stories before.
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Writer: Ann Marie Allison, Jenna Milly
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Bruce Greenwood, Timothy V. Murphy, Michael Bolton
Release Date: July 26, 2024
