Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fabulous Four’ on Paramount+ with Showtime, an Older Ladies Behaving Stupidly Comedy

The Fabulous Four (now streaming on Paramount+ with Showtime) makes you want to stand up and cheer: Hooray! Someone made a movie that isn’t for 14-year-olds, or 49-year-olds who still wish they were 14! Bette Midler, Susan Sarandon, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph star as old friends – note, I didn’t call them old, I called their FRIENDSHIPS old, and if you think this joke is hacky wait’ll you see the movie – who reunite in Key West for a wedding, and you’ll be SHOCKED to learn that high-larious stuff ensues. Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse (How to Make an American Quilt), the film sure boasts a lot of talent, but whether it’s utterly wasted like all the leftover restaurant food that gets tossed in the dumpster instead of given away to people who are hungry? That’s the question. 

THE FABULOUS FOUR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “We thought we would be best friends forever!” Lou (Sarandon) says in voiceover. Alas, ’twas not to be. She and Marilyn (Midler) were joined at the hip in college, and roommates as they established themselves as adults afterwards. Kitty (Ralph) and Alice (Mullally) joined the fold and they did everything together until they didn’t. Life! It happens! Kitty’s love of gardening became a blooming legal-weed business, Alice became a famous singer, Lou became a heart surgeon and Marilyn ran off with Lou’s man. Whoops. Water under the bridge? NO WAY. Forty-nine years later, and Lou’s still pissed. Does she feel anything for her former BFF now that Marilyn’s a widow? NOPE. Can Kitty and Alice convince Lou to join them for a jaunt to Key West for Marilyn’s wedding? CERTAINLY NOT. But what if Kitty and Alice lie to Lou and tell her she won a polydactyl cat in a contest and she has to go to Florida with them to get it? NOW WE’RE TALKING!

Are these people idiots? Quite possibly! I mean, Lou is a crack medical doctor but she buys the cat lie like a total rube. That’s a problem, but at least she and these rest of the characters have one, maybe two, human traits that make them quote-unquote relatable. Marilyn wonders if she jumped too quickly into the new relationship. Kitty’s at odds with her intensely religious daughter, who looks at the weed biz as a big fat sin. Alice likes to hit the vape and sleep with younger guys, so she’s the zany one. And Lou is so bitter about losing her beau to Marilyn, she’s now a Lonely Cat Lady. She also carries around her hatred so deep inside her, she might have to surgery herself right in the heart to get it out.

But as we’ve all learned by watching movies, half-century-old psychological pain can be salved in 98 minutes, as long as that time is spent getting into shenanigans: Trying on bridesmaid dresses, going parasailing, making obnoxious TikTok videos, meeting handsome age-appropriate gentlemen, going to strip clubs, stumbling into a live Michael Bolton performance, thwarting bicycle thieves by beaning them with a slingshotted kegel ball, etc. I wish I was making this stuff up. Oh, I forgot the multiple bits where they eat too many weed gummies. Such gold, this material! But: Will Marilyn and Lou ever bury the damn hatchet? Get out the electric knife maw, looks like we got an old beef to cut!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Book Club, Book Club: The Next Chapter and, lord help me, 80 for Brady, with the latter being the nadir of women-of-a-certain-vintage comedies.

Performance Worth Watching: I just saw another movie about a guy who’s forced to do insane things because a bad guy threatens to kill the guy’s loved one if he doesn’t. That’s my theory as to how Michael Bolton was persuaded to be in this movie. 

Memorable Dialogue: Lou just met a nice handsome man (Bruce Greenwood, who didn’t escape while he could) and tries to lie about why she’s so flushed:

Kitty: Why are you sweating like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs?

Lou: Because I’m hot. Because I’m wearing polyester underwear.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Out of mercy, I will identify the screenwriters of The Fabulous Four only as Alan Smithee and Roderick Jaynes. This is wearisome, desperate material that forces likable, highly talented, awards-ladened veteran actors to work way too hard to try to sell it. The result is embarrassing. Crazy cat lady jokes? Edibles-based slapstick? Dialogue that goes (roughly), “Ticky-tack-TikTok whatever”? The awkward situations of the plot could be solved with simple, direct words, a single line of dialogue, but these characters are incapable of the type of specificity of language most humans develop in early grade school. These ladies are all in their 60s and 70s, mind you. I’ll add additional screenwriting credits: Bazooka Joe, Bozo the Clown and Mad Libs.

I’m tempted to list all the better works by this quartet of actors as a holy incantation against the diseased spirit of The Fabulous Four, but we’d be here for a while. This movie makes the dregs look like Everest. At best it’s a lightweight, lightheaded collection of scenes in which women let loose a little and have fun – such a generous assessment, it borders on fabrication. At worst, it’s a puerile portrait of advanced adulthood. To say its target audience deserves better is gross understatement.

Our Call: SKIP IT and go watch Thelma instead – it proves that crowdpleasers can be smart, too.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.