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LifeOfTheParty.jpg

Melissa McCarthy, What Are You Doing?

By Kristy Puchko | Film | April 19, 2018 |

By Kristy Puchko | Film | April 19, 2018 |


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Melissa McCarthy is a very funny woman who’s thrown us into fits of gleeful, riotous laughter with turns in Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy. She’ll always be our Sookie St. James. But this extremely talented comedienne has one big blind spot, and it’s her husband Ben Falcone. More specifically, it’s that Falcone may be a loving and supportive partner, but as a comedy director, McCarthy deserves better.

Check out this recent slate of McCarthy projects and their Rotten Tomato scores.

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Now, guess which ones Falcone directed. Yep, The Boss and Tammy, two comedies that are at best mediocre, and at worst among McCarthy’s worst vehicles. One was McCarthy being mean to Kristen Bell for 99 minutes. The other starred Susan Sarandon, and had her and McCarthy brutally bickering for…laughs? Neither is a good showcase of McCarthy’s charisma or humor.

And hey, it’s not all Falcone’s fault. McCarthy shares screenplay credit on both, as she does on their latest venture Life of the Party. And that’s looking—well—to be in league with the pair’s prior collaborations. Check out the latest trailer below.

It’s not even that it looks bad, as much as like something we’ve seen before with Old School or Back To School or even The House Bunny. McCarthy deserves more than this stale concept and schtick where she’s talking out of her twat.

Look, McCarthy and Falcone seem a totally charming, happy couple. We hope they are. But maybe—when it comes to work—they’d be better served by finding new collaborators? For instance, McCarthy’s going to be starring opposite Tiffany Haddish in the crime-drama, The Kitchen, directed and penned by Straight Outta Compton screenwriter Andrea Berloff. She’s going to appear in the Muppet crime caper The Happytime Murders, which is helmed by Jim Henson’s son Brian Henson. And coming this fall, she’ll be playing notorious author Lee Israel in the dramedy/biopic Can You Ever Forgive Me? And that looks fantastic.

All of the above offer McCarthy chances to show her range, and spread her wings. And we’d be totally down to see McCarthy back in the saddle of envelope-pushing, wild comedies. (Is Spy 2 a possibility?!) But that doesn’t seem likely to happen with Falcone at the helm.