Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (May 16, 2018)
May 16, 2018 The Skanner Page 7 Arts & Entertainment FILM REVIEW: Divorcee Returns to School in ‘Life of the Party’ by Kam Williams Of The Skanner News D eanna Miles (Me- lissa McCarthy) was a junior in col- lege when she got pregnant and dropped out of school to have the baby. She married her boyfriend, Dan (Matt Walsh), who fi nished his degree and kickstarted his career while she re- mained a stay-at-home mom. Fast forward to the present and we fi nd the couple dropping now- grown Maddie (Molly Gordon) off at their alma mater, Decatur Univer- sity, where she’s about to begin her senior year. She’s happy to be mov- ing back in with her girl- friends living at Theta Mu Gamma sorority house. O n t h e drive home, D a n drops a bomb- shell on Deanna. He’s canceled their planned vacation in Italy in favor of fi ling for divorce. Furthermore, the callous creep wants her out of the house, since it’s in his name alone. To add insult to inju- ry, he’s putting it on the market with the help of his mistress Marcie (Ju- lie Bowen), a realtor in town. And he has the te- merity to rub salt into his shocked wife’s wounds by explaining the aff air with, “I just needed an decides to matriculate at the same college as his son. While Melissa McCar- thy has undeniably been hilarious in buddy fl icks and as part of an ensem- ble, a la “Bridesmaids” (2011), “The Heat” (2013) and “Ghostbusters” (2016), she remains yet to prove an ability to maintain that level of laughter carrying a star vehicle. That being said, this female-centric vari- ation on “Back to School” is well worth the invest- ment. ‘Life of the Party’ upgrade.” That cruel behavior frees Deanna to put some of his favorite be- longings in a pile and set them on fi re. Still, she’s left in a quandary about what to do next, not hav- ing worked and or even graduated from college. Then she comes up with the bright idea of returning to Decatur to do her senior year right along with her daughter. Too bad Molly’s morti- fi ed about the prospect of having her mom on cam- Very Good Rated PG-13 for sexuali- ty, partying and drug use Running time: 105 min- utes Production Studios: New Line Cinema/ Warner Brothers / On the Day Productions Distributor: New Line Cinema / Warner Broth- ers Pictures To see a trailer for Life of the Party, visit: TheSkanner.com. information is powerful pus. But that is precisely the premise of Life of the Party, a midlife crisis comedy directed by Ben Falcone and co-written by Ben and his real-life wife, Melissa McCarthy. The movie marks the couple’s third and most successful collaboration, following the less funny “Tammy” (2014) and “The Boss” (2016). This off er- ing is most reminiscent of “Back to School” (1986), the Rodney Dangerfi eld classic about a dad who Book slaves failed to usher in an era of freedom and true equality; to the vi- sionary, such as assess- ing the prospects for minorities in the age of Trump. In terms of the former, Stephenson asserts that “The North won the Civil War but the South won the narrative war. The South was able to per- suade the United States Supreme Court that ra- cial equality wasn’t nec- essary.” He laments the thousands of lynchings and other forms of ter- rorism which ensued that no one was held ac- countable for. Similarly, he says, “We won passage of the Civil Rights Act. But we lost the narrative war.” Consequently, the segre- gationists waving Con- federate fl ags were still able to maintain de facto white supremacy, evi- denced by schools named aft er disgraced rebels like Jeff erson Davis and Robert E. Lee. I doubt you’d fi nd any statues of Hitler and his henchmen scattered around Germany. Why not? Because not only did the Nazis lose World War II, they also lost the subsequent cultural war, which explains why Ste- phenson concludes for our purposes, “The chal- PHOTO BY JULIANA THOMAS / NYU cont’d from pg 6 ‘A Perilous Path’ authors Loretta Lynch, Bryan Stevenson, Sherrilyn Ifi ll, and Anthony G. Thompson lenge we face is a narra- tive battle.” To order a copy of the book, “A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law”, visit: www. amazon.com/exec /obi- dos/ASIN/1620973952/ ref%3dnosim/theska-20 the power is in your hands. NEWS
