Book Club: The Next Chapter

I’ve come to believe that any movie can be for anyone. Yes, movies often have some target audience in mind, whether it’s based on age or lived experience or value system. But if you’re open to it, any well-made movie can land. For example, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. is clearly aimed at preteen girls and mothers (or maybe generally parents) of preteen girls. And yet, it’s crafted in such a way that it’s currently in my top ten, despite me being a childless man three times the age of the titular character.

Which is to say I’m well aware I fall far outside the target demographic for Book Club, albeit in the opposite direction from Margaret. But that doesn’t mean I’m definitely going to dislike it. Yes, some of the jokes and such won’t land due to lack of relatability, but a well constructed movie is a well constructed movie.

Book Club: The Next Chapter finds the four friends emerging from their COVID isolation to find Vivian (Jane Fonda) is engaged. So of course, a bachelorette party is in order! They’d be planning to go to Italy before the world shut down, so why not just repurpose the trip? What could possibly go wrong?

One of the saving graces of most movies ignoring the COVID “lockdowns” (unless about them in some way) is that we don’t have to suffer through the same tired jokes about people not being able to figure out video chat or home delivery. Whereas Book Club opens with Sharon (Candice Bergen) managing to turn on the potato filter.

Once we’re past that, the humor doesn’t get much better. Much of it is based around older women talking about “taboo” stuff. I was not expecting so much talk about vaginas, although based on the trailer, that’s probably on me. The jokes are often lazy and obvious, as if they’re the first draft. The plot isn’t much better; the best you can expect are a few plot points which have two possible resolutions, and it only becoming clear which one they’ve picked a few scenes before they execute it. The rest you’ll predict the moment they’re introduced, if not before they even board the plane. To say nothing of the narrative devices you wouldn’t think of because they’re too dumb to be used, right up until they are.

And so much of what happens doesn’t matter, as it’s resolved almost immediately afterwards. There’s little tension, very little “How are they gonna get out of this mess?” They just do, with little effort. It’s because the script said so.

As with its sister movie from earlier this year, 80 For Brady, three of the main characters get their own mini-arc to compliment the longer (albeit thinner) movie spanning arc of the fourth. Carol (Mary Steenburgen) is always on her husband’s case about his health, which has been driving a wedge between them, and wouldn’t you know it, they run into an old flame of hers. Sharon is just a flirt who keeps attracting men, and has a contentious relationship with a local police chief (Giancarlo Giannini). Diane (Diane Keaton) has been seeing Mitchell (Andy Garcia) for a while, and is dead set against getting remarried, but keeps speaking in glowing terms of Viv’s upcoming wedding. And Viv keeps talking about the beauty of a committed relationship where you stay together by choice, not because of the legal annoyance and difficulty of separation. None of these go anywhere surprising, and yet for a few of them, it’s as if the movie expects a standing ovation.

Humor is subjective, so it’s hard for me to say that’s the biggest thing hurting the film. But what 80 For Brady has that Book Club: The Next Chapter lacks is larger than life characters, the type to stay with you once you leave the theater. The police chief, Chef Gianni (Vincent Riotta), and Ousmane (Hugh Quarshie) are all fine, but none of them make much of an impression. At least, nothing like Billy Porter and Guy Fieri.

Maybe I’m not the best judge, because the two dozen or so other people in the audience seemed to love it, laughing at every joke, gasping at every obstacle. I think this is a case of the trailer being pretty dead on. So go ahead and watch that, and you'‘ll know for sure if you should sit through the whole presentation.