Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Life of the Party Blu-ray Movie Review

New/Old Girl on Campus

Reviewed by Michael Reuben August 6, 2018

You have to give it up for Melissa McCarthy. She's managed to turn herself into a brand with enough of a fan base to support a stream of comedies in which she basically plays the same character. Whether cast as a loser (Tammy), a spy (Spy), an online swindler (Identity Thief), an FBI agent (The Heat) or a business tycoon (The Boss), McCarthy's persona remains essentially that of a motor-mouthed bovine in a china shop. Indeed, one of the reasons why McCarthy's SNL impression of former Presidential press secretary Sean Spicer was so effective was the unstoppable energy she brings to all her characters. As her version of Spicer bulldozed his way through troublesome reporters, blaring from a motorized podium, McCarthy managed to be spicier than the real "Spicy".

McCarthy's most recent film, Life of the Party ("LotP"), is another collaboration with husband Ben Falcone, who directed and co-wrote the script with his wife. The same team also created Tammy and The Boss, but LotP was far less well-received at the box office. Maybe McCarthy's fans were simply waiting for the video release, as the window between video and theatrical continues to shrink. Or maybe the formula is wearing out. Either way, LotP is a dispirited affair, intermittently amusing but on the whole disappointing.

As many have already noted, LotP borrows its basic premise from Rodney Dangerfield's classic Back to School, with appropriate adjustments for the intervening thirty-two years and a female lead. McCarthy plays Deanna Miles, who dropped out of Decatur University in her senior year to have daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon), while her husband, Dan (Matt Walsh), graduated and went on to a career. Now, as Deanna and Dan drop off Molly for her senior year, Dan tells his wife that he wants a divorce, because he's in love with another woman, a sharp-edged realtor named Marcie (Julie Bowen). After commiserating with her parents (Stephen Root and Jacki Weaver) and her best friend, Christine (Maya Rudolph), Deanna decides to re-enroll and complete her archaeology degree. Maddie is less than thrilled to be sharing the campus with her own mom, but just as in Back to School, Deanna's indomitable spirit eventually wins over both her daughter and the rest of the student body. (And she does it without the assistance of the personal fortune, formidable bodyguard or athletic prowess that Dangerfield's character had in Back to School.)

LotP is dominated by sitcom aesthetics and bizarre contrivances. Maddie's sorority house, where Deanna is eventually inducted into membership, is more spacious and lavishly appointed than any campus residence I've ever seen. It's more like the luxury dorm suite that Dangerfield's Thornton Melon inhabits after an expensive remodel. Maddie's sorority sisters are a collection of problems who can benefit from Deanna's mothering, and her roommate (current SNL cast member Heidi Gardner) is a stereotypical looney (she never leaves the room). Like Thornton Melon before her, Deanna flirts with a professor, Wayne Truzac (SNL alum Chris Parnell), who just happens to have been one of her classmates all those years ago, and whose bad puns about his chosen field of archaeology don't get funnier with repetition—though Deanna enjoys them.

But before Deanna can respond to the professor's advances, she first has to get years of frustrated sexuality out of her system with a hunky senior named Jack (Luke Benward), who, in the film's most eye-rolling subplot, is so besotted with a woman more than twice his age that the pair can't meet in the library without disappearing into the stacks for a torrid coupling. I suppose the turnabout is only fair play, after years of male movie stars being romantically paired with much younger women, but LotP doesn't even try to make Deanna and Luke a convincing couple beyond the suggestion that, you know, older women know things. Admittedly, the affair does culminate in one of the film's best jokes, but it's still about as credible as the near-complete absence of notebook computers and tablets in a contemporary college lecture hall—what was the production designer thinking?—or the notion that Deanna, who's anything but shy, freaks out at the prospect of making a class presentation.

The best parts of LotP arrive courtesy of its supporting cast. Weaver and Root as Deanna's parents are such an effective comedy team that they deserve their own movie (their character names, Sandy and Mike, are taken from McCarthy's real-life parents, and according to McCarthy, so is much of their behavior). The reliable Maya Rudolph effortlessly transforms Deanna's best friend into the kind of unpredictable whirlwind that Deanna is trying so hard to be (and when Rudolph's Christine keeps slipping off to have sex with her age-appropriate husband, you believe it). As Deanna's creepy roommate, Heidi Gardner expands a one-note character into an aria of dysfunction—and also turns out to be key to one of the film's many convenient coincidences. Meanwhile, poor Molly Gordon, who has been such a memorable presence in TNT's Animal Kingdom, remains saddled with the thankless role of perpetual onlooker, alternately annoyed, embarrassed and bemused by her student-mom's antics. With everyone around her pushing their characters' eccentricities to the limits in order to keep up with McCarthy's cyclonic presence, the film's only "normal" character gets blown off the screen.

Life of the Party Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Life of the Party was digitally photographed by Julio Macat, who also shot McCarthy's The Boss and whose comic credits include Wedding Crashers and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The film has been designed and lit like a glossy TV sitcom, no doubt to assist in the extreme suspension of disbelief that McCarthy's films require. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray exhibits all the usual virtues of contemporary digital capture, with solid blacks, superior sharpness and detail and an absence of noise, interference or artifacts. The colors are bright and richly saturated, never more so than at the Eighties theme party attended by Deanna with Maddie and her friends, where costume designer Louise Mingenbach has had a field day re-imagining an era where the clothing was wildly excessive (but rarely so much as in LotP's Hollywood re-creation).

A reputation, once acquired, can be very hard to change, and I still see posts at Blu-ray.com decrying Warner's low bitrates. However, LotP is yet another example of the studio's new-found (and, as yet, inconsistent) embrace of more generous encoding, with an average bitrate of 29.79 Mbps and a capable encode.

Life of the Party Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

LotP's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, keeps the dialogue front, center and fully prioritized, as comedies usually do. Every so often, there will be an interesting rear channel effect (e.g., Deanna's racket ball games with Christine, where you can hear the ball bouncing off the wall behind you), but for the most part the surrounds are limited to ambiance and to supporting the lively and occasionally sentimental score by Fil Eisler, a regular contributor to TV's Empire, among other shows. Dynamic range is broad, and bass extension is serious, especially in the frat party scene, where the music is appropriately ear-splitting.

Life of the Party Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• 80's Party (1080p; 1.78:1; 4:51): A look at the "I Love the 80's" campus party that Deanna attends with her daughter and new "sisters".



• Mom Sandwich (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:45): McCarthy and Falcone describe McCarthy's real parents, notably her mother's preoccupation with sandwiches, which became a running joke in the film.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 46:36): The scenes are not individually listed or selectable. A title card precedes each of them.
• Sc 5: Uber Australian Version
• Sc 8: Mom Call
• Sc 15: Racquetball
• Sc 16: Guidance Counselor
• Sc 21: Quad Walk
• Sc 22: Archaeology Class 1
• Sc 35: Shots
• Sc 45: Archaeology Class 2
• Sc 54: Pop & Lock
• Sc 56: Walk of Pride
• Sc 63: Earring
• Sc 63: Restaurant
• Sc 68: Weed Bark
• Sc 68: Sandbag
• Sc 68: Spider Gloves
• Sc 87: 80% Christina
• Sc 90: Truzac



• Line-o-Rama: Line-o-Rama (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:02): A random collection of ad libs.



• Line-o-Rama: Bill Hate-o-Rama (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:44): A collection of ad libbed insults directed at Bill (co-producer Steve Mallory), the unflappable CPA half of the couple that accompanies Deanna, Christine and Christine's husband, Frank (Damon Jones), to a restaurant for dinner.



• Gag Reel (1080p; 1.78:1; 5:25): Tepid.



• Trailers: The film's trailer is not included. At startup, the disc plays trailers for Crazy Rich Asians, Ocean's 8 and Ready Player One.

Life of the Party Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As is no doubt obvious, I don't number among Melissa McCarthy's fans, but even they may be ready for something new. If LotP doesn't sell any better on video than it did at the box office, she and Falcone might want to consider a different approach. How about a role in which the comedienne keeps all of that manic energy bottled up inside while trying to maintain a stable exterior? Now that would be an interesting change of pace. In the meantime, LotP is recommended on its technical merits. The film itself is strictly for McCarthy loyalists.