On any other week of the year, a new Tina Fey-Amy Poehler pairing would be all anyone was talking about. While Sisters exists as smart counter-programming, most critics saved their careful consideration and overwrought sentences for a certain space opera reboot, dismissing this comedy outright. A mistake. The Poehler-Fey duo is a glorious thing, a perfect platonic coupling that never panders even when it’s aiming low, as it does here with a Big Party Movie (But For The Middle Aged). They’re clearly comfortable together, on each other’s wavelength, familiar and trusting. Any other week and there’d be a half-dozen Women In Comedy think-pieces comparing Sisters to Trainwreck and Broad City. Alas. Here they switch their Baby Mama roles—Fey is the trashy idiot Kate, Poehler the uptight and considerate Maura. When their parents (Dianne Wiest, wonderful; James Brolin, overdoing it) sell their Orlando home, they return for one last bash. This movie is less a Golden Globes host gig than it is two stars just doing what they want, and even then they don’t abuse it like Apatow’s people would. A loose two hours, Sisters is not about anything large or important, it’s just a hilarious film about the bonds of women who take care of their own lives despite copious outside pressures; just some little stuff like that.
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