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.
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