Producers: Donna Gigliotti and Tom Brady   Director: Kyle Marvin    Screenplay: Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern   Cast: Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno, Sally Field, Tom Brady, Billy Porter, Rob Corddry, Alex Moffat, Guy Fieri, Harry Hamlin, Bob Balaban, Glynn Turman, Sara Gilbert, Ron Funches, Jimmy O. Yang, Matt Lauria, Sally Kirkland, Andy Richter, Marshawn Lynch, Patton Oswalt and Retta   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C+

A sweet little human-interest vignette suitable for a local TV sports show has been blown up into an episodic, old-fashioned big-screen sitcom in Kyle Marvin’s debut directorial feature.  The saving grace of “80 for Brady,” insofar as it has one, is that it offers four screen icons of a certain age—Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Rita Moreno and Sally Field—the opportunity to do some extended comic riffs, individually and in varied couplings.  They’re hardly inspired riffs, but you might smile occasionally watching them.

The only true part of the movie—based, as the saying goes, on a true story—is that there was a quintet of elderly ladies who regularly watched the New England Patriots games on TV, cheering their special hero quarterback Tom Brady.  The screenplay by Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern reduces their number to four and then fashions a completely fictional scenario involving their not only going to Houston for the 2017 Super Bowl LI in which the Patriots faced the Atlanta Falcons, but despite the fact that their tickets prove bogus, playing a decisive role in its famous outcome.

Each of the quartet is a character in the most flamboyant sense.  Tomlin’s Lou is a cancer survivor who, despite the pleas of her daughter (Sara Gilbert), is ignoring a letter from the hospital about the results of some recent tests; she believes that making it to the game might be a last hurrah for her and the gang, and whenever she’s in the doldrums dreams that she gets uplifting messages from Brady (playing himself).  Fonda’s Trish is an erstwhile model on TV commercials who’s become a bestselling author of romance novels with football backdrops; having been too often burned in love, she’s also afraid of getting too close to any man until she meets Dan (Harry Hamlin), a handsome ex-player with a Super Bowl ring.  Moreno’s Maura is a grieving widow who’s moved into a retirement home where another resident, Mickey (Glynn Turman), is sweet on her.  And Fields’s Betty, who always points out that she’s the young one, still in her seventies, is a retired MIT professor whose absent-minded husband (Bob Balaban), a math prof, is completely dependent on her and keeps pestering her for advice about his latest article.

Lou claims to have won tickets to the game on a contest run by wacko Pats super-fans Pat (Rob Corddry) and Nat (Alex Moffat), and the gals rush to the airport after tussling with retirement home manager Tony (Jimmy O. Yang) to liberate Maura, who’s mistakenly taken a powerful sleeping pill.  On reaching Houston, they get into a series of adventures.  A good deal of time is spent at the NFL Experience, where all four become stars among the crowd (Betty, for instance, winning first prize in a hot wings eating contest hosted by Guy Fieri)—the lengthy sequence serves as a virtual commercial for the event (but only a bit more so than the whole picture)—and at an extravagant pre-game party, where they indulge not just in dances and sweet conversations with studly young guys like Matt Lauria but in a celebrity poker game, where Maura wins big. 

That game proves important the next day, when the tickets, lost but then found, turn out to be fake and they have to get help from Gugu (Billy Porter), one of the card sharks, who uses his clout as choreographer of the halftime show to sneak them in past the eyes of a by-the-book security guard (Ron Funches).  They wind up, through Dan’s influence, in the VIP box, from which they watch the on-field action in dismay and decide to intervene to provide their idol with the encouragement—and advice—he needs. 

All of this is the purest fantasy, of course, except for the substantial game footage, which the NFL was clearly instrumental in providing—a fair trade, one might argue, for the free publicity the movie represents.  (It’s certainly no accident that it’s being released just before the 2023 Super Bowl.)  The sketch-like construction and limp, musty comedy the various episodes are based on are hardly of grade-A quality, but they’re elevated by the expertise of the four stars, who prove instrumental in transforming the feeble material into an agreeable time-waster for older audiences.  Football fans may be amused by the way that the actual Super Bowl LI has been integrated into the fairy-tale scenario, but the outcome of the game will come as no surprise to them; nor will the ending of the movie to anybody.  As for Brady, he exhibits a pleasant smile, but on the basis of this appearance he’ll need some lessons before pursuing an acting career during his retirement, which he’s now announced for a second time.  The supporting cast add some nifty grace notes, with Hamlin, Balaban and Turman most notable in the large ensemble.   

Marvin, a long-time producer, doesn’t exhibit much imagination here, but at least he gives his stars ample freedom to strut their stuff, and among the crew editor Colin Patton does an especially good job, not merely in connecting the loosely-related scenes but in cutting together the game footage with the newly-shot sequences in the VIP booth.  Otherwise production designer Wynn Thomas, costumer Allyson B. Fanger and cinematographer John Toll give the picture a glossy look, while John Debney’s score is predictably perky.

Tomlin, Fonda, Moreno and Field all deserve MVP status here.  It’s too bad they weren’t provided with a championship screenplay. 

Producers: Lindsay Tapscott, Katie Bird Nolan, Christina Piovesan and Noah Segal   Director: Mary Nighy  Screenplay: Alanna Francis   Cast: Anna Kendrick, Kaniehtiio Horn, Wunmi Mosaku, Charlie Carrick, Ethan Mitchell and Mark Winnick   Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade:  C+

A mousy young woman gradually recognizes the toxic nature of a psychologically abusive relationship with a manipulative boyfriend in Mary Nighy’s debut feature.  One can criticize “Alice, Darling” for a lack of subtlety, but it does showcase an impressive performance by Anna Kendrick, an actress whose dramatic ability has often been overlooked. 

Kendrick is Alice, who’s apparently capable professionally, though her work is never really specified, but has proven unwise in her private life.  Somehow she’s become so dependent on her live-in boyfriend Simon (Charlie Carrick), a painter worried about his career, that she’s either oblivious about how possessive he is, or so insecure that she’s willing to submit to his cunning mechanisms of control: he conceals his emotional blackmail in a guise of over-solicitousness that can, however, take on a cutting, accusatory edge.

That’s apparent to Alice’s best friends Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku), who watch warily as she’s bombarded by texts from him while the three are out for an evening; they even nudge her into noticing the attentions of their waiter (Ethan Mitchell), who adds his phone number to her receipt.

But Alice leaves early and takes care to destroy that receipt before Simon can see it and get unreasonably jealous.  Then, after assuring him that his career is on track and their spark undimmed, she proceeds to fashion a lie to deceive him about a weeklong stay she’s planning with her girlfriends to celebrate Tess’ thirtieth birthday at the lakeside cabin of Sophie’s parents.  She tells him that it’s a work trip to Minneapolis, but the deception eats away at her.  She’s constantly pulling at her hair and nibbling at her nails, unable to enjoy herself as she awaits the next text from the man who needs her so desperately that she can’t help but respond.

Nighy and screenwriter Alanna Francis are very good at portraying the way the friendship among the three women can suddenly turn from affectionate banter to something sharper as Tess and Sophie observe how Alice has changed under Simon’s supposedly supportive thumb and she takes offense.  Even though the script never manages to explain the history behind their closeness—on the surface, at least, they don’t appear the most likely of long-time comrades, with Tess and Sophie’s career paths very different from Alice’s.

But both Horn and Mosaku give their characters, as sketchy as they are, a lived-in feel, the former brusquer and the latter more motherly.  Both pale, though, compared to Kendrick, who puts her natural talent for nervousness and skittishness to good use in convincing us that Alice is a sympathetic person, if also an obstinately obtuse one when it comes to Simon’s machinations.

There are, however, problems when the film moves beyond its psychological portrait of Alice into symbolism and melodrama.  From the very start Alice is shown submerged in water, as if she were drowning in Simon’s stifling attention, a metaphor that recurs again and again.  A thread is introduced about a local girl who’s gone missing, possibly abducted—Alice even joins the search for her at one point, apparently to suggest that she’s lost too, and in possible danger.  One specific episode related to it—Alice’s investigation of an abandoned house where she finds what might be a clue to the girl’s disappearance—seems utterly extraneous, especially since nothing is ultimately made of it. 

But the biggest miscalculation comes in the third act, when Simon intrudes on the women’s get-together and Alice, after we’ve watched her, through bouts of introspection larded with flashbacks, come to realize how cowed she’s become, appears to fall back into her habit of catering to him despite her friends’ glares of disapproval.  Carrick is good—perhaps too good—at bringing a sinister aura to everything Simon says and does, drawing a contrast between him and Alice’s two friends that makes overly obvious a reality that up to then had been more deftly treated.  The final resolution, moreover, is extremely heavy-handed in fully bringing out Simon’s true colors. 

Production designer Jennifer Morden, costumer Marissa Schwartz and cinematographer Mike McLaughlin give the film a raw, naturalistic look that fits the narrative, the exceptions being those dreamy underwater episodes, and editor Gareth C. Scales inserts the flashback clips with as much nuance as the technique allows.  Owen Pallett’s score tends occasionally to be overbearing, but is generally supportive rather than intrusive.

As a chamber drama of a young women’s gradual liberation from psychological abuse, “Alice, Darling” carries emotional power, largely because of Kendrick’s outstanding performance; but it is not without serious flaws.