Wine Country Review: A Pleasant Trip but Lacks Some Punch
Can I just say something?
I grew up watching Saturday Night Live in every iteration (new episodes on NBC, reruns on Comedy Central) far before I probably was old enough to handle, or fully understand, all of the content.
The era of Amy Poehler/Ana Gasteyer/Maya Rudolph/Rachel Dratch/Tina Fey was a golden age for the long-running comedy, and their time on the show overlapped with my own coming of age, when so much of the pop culture we engage with becomes embedded in our psyche and memory(an idea the film also touches on a bit).
To this day, I can still quote dozens of sketches verbatim.
These are women I love, and women I feel I know, so I, like so many others, was thrilled when the teaser for Netflix’s Wine Country, Amy Poehler’s directorial debut, premiered.
It’s also why I find Wine Country somewhat disappointing. It’s a pleasantly amusing way to spend two hours but it never reaches the heights worthy of the collective talents of its cast, which is chock full of Saturday Night Live veterans.
Imagine a Nancy Meyers setting with sprinkles of Girls Trip, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, and Bridesmaids. The cast’s chemistry is top notch and while the events of the film are said to have been inspired by some of the group’s real life adventures, the writing hampers the group’s natural energy.
I wished we’d just propped a camera and let them improv or bounce off of each other as they do in this video.
Amy Poehler, a bold goddess in her own right, plays central protagonist and trip mastermind Abby.
At one point, Abby confesses that she doesn’t want anything to go wrong over the weekend. I can’t help but wonder if that notion extended to Poehler’s directing efforts, causing her to play it fairly safe.
That’s not to say there aren’t things that Wine Country gets undeniably right.
First, the movie revels in the real-life ages of its cast. Each woman is dressed age appropriately and lit and filmed in a way that acknowledges and celebrates their age.
Everyone looks like a 40 or 50 year old woman, and everyone looks beautiful. That’s rare, when often women are painted and tucked to look younger on screen. There’s none of that here.
Additionally, it understands some of the dynamics about groups of friends in general. Within groups, there are always pairs of friends that are closer to one another. There are also often friends who seem on the outskirts of the group either intentionally or by design, friends who coordinate and sometimes micromanage everything, friends who have made decisions or who have partners that you fundamentally disapprove of, even though you want to be supportive.
This recipe may sound cliched but tropes are tropes for a reason and Wine Country tries to acknowledge all of the ways these dynamics play out in friendship as we grow older.
I recognized echoes of myself and my friends multiple times — and I’m not even in the same phase of life as the characters.
The film also showcases how our longstanding friendships, the ones mined during our formative years, stay with us long after our life paths have diverged. Throughout the whole trip, the women singalong to favorite songs of their youth and recall stories from their early jobs with a certain wistfulness.
The good old days don’t always seem that way when you’re in them but reuniting with your old friends gives you an opportunity to relive some of that while also honoring where you are now.
Wine Country does a good job of showing the lightness and easiness that the women bring to each other when they’re just riffing and being silly (there’s a great bit where the group goofs off at a horrendously boring organic winery) and there are moments where it feels like it’s going to address the hard reality of intimate friendships.
Just as much as you need your friends to laugh and giggle drunkenly with you, you need them to say the hard things to you too. It’s difficult to hear unpleasant revelations and truths about yourself from them but truly, they’re the only ones who really can tell you the truth.
Wine Country is on the precipice of deeply digging into this complexity, but backs away from it, choosing for a slightly easier approach.
The conflicts surrounding where the women are currently in life (a loser husband, unemployment, and a health scare all play a role) and the ones they have with each other seem too easily resolved and there’s never any doubt that any tension from the weekend will dissipate easily. The stakes stay too low.
While the script feels constraining, there are some moments throughout the movie that are so ridiculous or illuminating about a character that they will elicit genuine guffaws.
Tina Fey’s character, loner Tammy, wryly questions whether all the women know each other because they magically fit into the same pants and confesses that if she makes a full-size frozen pizza, she feels no choice but to eat the whole thing (same, Tammy, same).
Fey isn’t in the movie as much as you might expect but each one of her appearances breathes life into the proceedings.
Her character is also representative of another theme of the film: the importance of connection. Try as she might to separate herself from getting mired in the affairs of others, as human beings, we’re wired to connect and care for others and she’s integrated into the group by the end (OMG, I’m so pulling a Brene Brown right now).
In the midst of a meltdown about her layoff, Abby spirals and starts ranting about the challenges the environment is facing, the dwindling rhino population, and plastic in the ocean.
It’s indicative of her overwhelming anxiety that once the dam breaks and she lets herself feel the pain she’s been stuffing down that she can’t stop fretting about everything else that is upsetting to her.
Maya Rudolph runs away with the film — her character Naomi has the most compelling arc — and she has the best scene of the whole movie when she drunkenly high jacks a band for a rendition of “Eternal Flame.” It’s a testament to Rudolph that she manages to create the most distinct character in an ensemble film full of traditional scene stealers.
Overall, Wine Country is worth a watch, and it’s a pleasure to see these extraordinary women interact on screen.
However, given the pedigree of its cast, it’s hard to shake the notion that the audience may have missed out on a more fun trip (hell, making the movie may have been more enjoyable than the movie itself).
What did you think of Wine Country? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Wine Country is available for streaming on Netflix.
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Cristina Iskander
Cristina is a Broadway enthusiast, book lover, and pop-culture fanatic living in New York City. She once won a Fantasy Bachelor contest (yes, like Fantasy Football, but for The Bachelor), and can banter about old school WB (Pacey + Joey FTW) just as well as Stranger Things and Pen15. She's still upset Benson and Stabler never got together and is worried Rollins and Carisi are headed down the same road, wants justice for Shangela, and hopes to one day walk-and-talk down a hallway with Aaron Sorkin.