Review: “Mack & Rita,” a comedy about aging women, grows old fast
Mack , one of two title characters in “Mack & Rita,” feels the opposite. Raised by her stylish grandmother , Mack feels like, as she puts it, a 70-year-old in the body of a 30-year-old woman. She’s tired of high heels and staying up late and a lifestyle fueled by a vaguely successful career as an author: Her one book did well; she’s now stuck on a second.
At this point, you can pretty much Mad Lib the rest of the script for yourself: There’s zaniness, a touching lesson and so on. The biggest source of tension is the sexual-ish banter between Keaton and Mack’s neighbor Jack .For the most part, Rita still has to navigate a world built for the young. When Mack’s agent — unaware of Mack’s transformation — assigns her to go to a “Pilates for All Bodies” event, all the bodies are young, female and thin.
It’s wonderful to see older women on-screen. It’s wonderful to see getting older presented as something a younger woman wants to do, even if she doesn’t really understand what comes with it: knee pain, weird pokey hairs on your chin, getting those pill organizers with “AM” and “PM” written on them — and more knee pain. But “Mack & Rita”
just can’t sell that message. Keaton, who can be so, so funny, seems at a loss as to what to do. The short script by Madeline Walter and Paul Welsh is stuffed with filler. At one point, Rita does magic mushrooms to try to turn back into the younger Mack . The members of the book club are uniformly great, and Milligan is genial enough in a generic way, but the standout performance belongs to Taylour Paige as Mack’s best friend, Carla.
“Mack & Rita” feels, paradoxically, both too short and overlong. It could have examined the theme of aging much more deeply. Alternatively, it might have made a nice short film about a young person who becomes a senior citizen for a night. As it is, it’s a story that doesn’t need to be told and isn’t told very well. And there’s no mention of the retirement plan the book club gals must have to maintain their “glamma” aesthetic.
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