I’m just curious … how do you direct an actor with a spinning toy ballerina stuck up his ass? “Ok, now show it. The audience has to believe there is real discomfort … ok, good, now sell the spin from the attached music box …” No, I can’t vouch that every moment of Sisters was tasteful — I can’t even vouch that any moment from Sisters was tasteful; but there were moments that made me laugh, including the one I just described.
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are both missing their television gigs these days and it shows. Given the opportunity to create any art or brand of humor one might imagine, these ladies decided to play stunted dead-end single fortysomething Sisters, who decide to solve their collective life woes with a bitchin’ party … just as a pair of eighteensomethings 
might.
Just a pointer – when you’re making a film that is supposed to appeal to middle aged parents, try to avoid invoking Project X.
Divorced single mother Kate Ellis (Fey) has lost more jobs to temper than the combined efforts of every single person you know, while Maura Ellis (Poehler) is the kind of gal who writes about Amnesty International in her diary. The two are brought to Florida to clean out their childhood; the ‘rents (Dianne Wiest and James Brolin) have sold their family home and moved to a retirement community, clearing the house of everything but the girls’ possessions. The girls … don’t take it well, and lacking a sense of responsibility occasionally found in their adult peers, decide it’s party time at “Ellis Island.”
Now without the party, Sisters is exactly one hilarious Wiest/Brolin screen freeze surrounded by a series of uncomfortable objectifications involving Fey, Poehler, Ike Barinholtz and John Leguizamo. God help you, ladies, for combining John Leguizamo and sex talk in your film … why, movie, why? When not indulging in puerile bootyspeak, the humor in this film centers about moments like Maura’s inability to pronounce the Korean name of her manicurist, Hae-Won (Greta Lee). It neither works nor doesn’t work. Sisters needs the party where John Cena and about fifty SNL alumni show up just to get something on screen that might merit a smile. Nice 
to give Cena some redemption here, btw, after Trainwreck was so cruel to him.
Yes, the Eills Island drugs/paint/cat fight/rock climbing/romance/Fey & Poehler channel Kid n’ Play party kicks up Sisters a notch, but left me asking, “What is the difference between this film and any teen party raunch, really?” The deliberate outrageousness of the middle aged shindig exists entirely to cover poorly realized and unsympathetic characters. Do we like Kate and Maura more because they’re willing to have that one last bash? Or does it just seem that much more pathetic? I could make a case for either; but, and I stress this, you have to be pretty damn sold on Tina Fey or Amy Poehler to consider this film entertaining.
Hardly the latest noobs on the black
Time and Amy, resorting to schlock
A better collab
Would make TV fab:
Perhaps time for “Parks & 30 Rock”
Rated R, 118 Minutes
D: Jason Moore
W: Paula Pell
Genre: Not-so-grand old party
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: SNL junkies
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Misogynists
