Wine Country

— A trip to Sonoma Wine Country to celebrate one person’s 50th birthday offers a group of old friends a chance to reunite, unwind, reassess, and rebuild. Think “The Hangover” with women and by women. The cast is stellar but their material’s not quite up to their talents. Sometimes it seems like the characters made the film as an excuse to get together, but they don’t appear to have figured out how to have as much fun as the “Oceans" trilogy cast. What’s interesting are the topics they discuss. Evidently fictional women focus on about the same things as fictional men, and have moments where they can’t resist reverting to adolescent, off-color humor. If only it had the depth of “Sideways,” a far better wine country experience. Poehler bats a solid “meh” for her directorial debut, mostly because the cast members, with the exception of Tina Fey, are just on comedic autopilot. Maybe they needed less script and more time to ad lib. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2019. 103 min. Directed by Amy Poehler. Starring Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Paula Pell, and Tina Fey.]
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/06/wine-country-review-amy-poehler-netflix-comedy-is-a-drunken-riot