Directed By Katie Aselton

Starring – Diane Keaton, Elizabeth Lail, Taylour Paige

The Plot – A 30-year-old writer (Lail) spends a wild weekend in Palm Springs and wakes up to find she has magically transformed into her 70-year-old self (Keaton).

Rated PG-13 for some drug use, sexual references and adult language

(1) MACK & RITA Official Trailer – Starring Diane Keaton – In Theaters Everywhere August 12th – YouTube

POSITIVES

Without question, Keaton and Lail are the proverbial needles in the movie’s haystack, with a duo of sharply stinging performances that not only prove each of them to be too good for the film they capably adorn, but also etch out a rare believability in dynamic that works cohesively with the script’s loosely written gimmick of transformation. Because each of them is directed with an underlining immaturity that intentionally and periodically contradicts the balance of their respective ages, there’s a magnetic symmetry between them that constantly binds their portrayals, allowing the audience to seamlessly interpret that each of them is emoting the very same person. For Lail, it’s the innocence and earnestness that drive the imaginative qualities of her appeal, while Keaton’s wit throughout a consistency of physicality showcases the irresistible charisma that have become a stable of her fifty-plus year career in the industry. Beyond this spirited duo, the presentation from Aselton, even with elements of underwhelming production, is a vital step forward in the youthful career of her second act, proving her place as a guiding force in cinema on any level. The color grading and lighting are much improved from her previous film “Black Rock”, making the most of its rumored 5-million-dollar budget, and the establishing shots of Los Angeles and surrounding Burroughs convey beauty and boldness in the allure of the film’s intoxicating cinematography from Sean McElwee, with sunbaked splendor to the very posh and lavish surroundings of upper class set designs.

NEGATIVES

If you’ve seen one of these age transformation films, you’ve seen them all. Except in the case of “Mack and Rita”, it’s familiar without attaining the warmth and charms of films like “Big” or “13 Going on 30” that did it better. For starters, the script feels incomplete, with unexplored logic in gimmicks and predictability in story direction underwhelming expectations from the opening minutes. Because of such, there are many moments in the 88-minute run time where the storytelling stalls, subduing us in place without ever getting to the core of the concept in the plot that even an hour after I’ve seen the film still doesn’t make sense. In the aforementioned “13 Going on 30”, it’s a little girl who wants to be older to attain the freedoms not otherwise afforded to adolescents, but in this film it’s a 30-year-old woman wishing to be 70, made all the more puzzling by the film’s clichéd examples of elderly depiction that even lack enough consistency to make them legitimate. This is where the film could’ve easily succeeded in depicting the tribulations of senior citizens, but instead deduces them to wine-sipping horny types that only occasionally and conveniently wear the weight of their mileage. This leads to the tonal dominance of humor in the film’s consistencies, underwhelming with an ineffectiveness to deliveries that are at fault with a constant slapstick brand of humor that the film uses as a punchline for any moment with even a second of intuitive knowledge for Mack’s experiences. Never once did I laugh throughout, nor did I feel anything other than pity towards Keaton, who somehow signed on to star and produce a film that humiliates her with responses and treatment that would otherwise mirror senility, but here are used for shameless punchlines of the least tasteful variety. Then there’s the romantic angle of the film, depicted here between a 70-year-old Keaton and a 30-year-old suitor (Played by Dustin Milligan). Aside from this character eliciting annoyances in the depth of his hipster lifestyle, the difficulty in watching them make out is as uncomfortable as anything you will be forced to witness this year, with everything framed as sweetly sentimental to try to fool you into thinking that it’s anything other than creepy, which it never comes close to attaining. Before I lose my lunch on this topic, I will transition to the film’s technical elements, which convolute the execution with some of the worst audio deposits and editing that I have seen in a conventional production in quite some time. Because there’s little to no ambition with the schemes and concepts of how scenes are shot, the problems with them are all the more glaring, with volume controls sharply contrasting out of nowhere in the very same scene they were initially reserved, and cuts between angles feeling abruptly painful in the way they undercut focus frenetically in ways that are turbulent to say the least. Often times it leads to characters having their dialogue forcefully hymned, while others are so obviously stitching two readings from different times together to make one cohesive structure, and in turn undercutting the building of momentum that the film can’t even momentarily gain in the smallest of measures. Finally, while the film attempts a heartfelt lesson in the confines of its many elderly experiences, it’s never even remotely earned with the complete lack of evolution towards Mack’s unexplored arc. Because we rarely if ever see the older version of her in peril, we never experience this as anything gratifying in the knowledge attained from the other side, in turn keeping the narrative from ever fully living up to the potential forcefully cemented by the film’s predictably bland closing moments that reach for triumph, but instead dissolve matters with the tragedy that it never balances while in the confines of the other side.

OVERALL
“Mack and Rita” is a shamelessly syrupy and tastelessly derivative Nancy Myers film waiting to mature but can’t as a result of the anything but creative elements that consistently stunt its growth. Though Keaton and Lail are cohesively in tune with one another while eliciting a two-for-one performance that breeds believability, the rest of the film surrounding them compromises this notion with metaphorical and artificial remedies that point out the heart in its intention without ever exploring it.

My Grade: 2/10 or F-