Life as Deanna knew it ends abruptly after dropping off her beloved daughter Maddie (Molly Gordon) at Decatur University. As they drive away in their Ford SUV, her husband Dan (Matt Walsh) announces (“in the interest of transparency”) that he’s divorcing her. Trading up for a real estate agent whose face is on every bus bench, he wants to “facilitate a clean break.” Dan is dull and soulless as the clichés that drip from his mouth, and it’s a measure of Melissa McCarthy’s acting talent that Deanna’s surprise, dismay and pain are evident—even in the midst of a comedy.
Directed by McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone who co-wrote the script with her, Life of the Party is less about divorce than about a woman reclaiming her life. Twenty-two years earlier when she became pregnant with Maddie, Deanna left college and put her life’s ambitions on pause. What now? Moving back with her parents is as unattractive as living alone. Much to Maddie’s horror, Deanna decides to enroll at Decatur and finish her degree. Won’t that be fun, mom and daughter in school together?
When Deanna turns up on campus with her bad perm, middle-aged eyeglasses and baggy pastel sweaters, the eye-rolling mean girls have a field day at her expense. The cringe-worthy stories she tells about Maddie as a girl are enough to make her daughter hide. But the fish-out-of-water comedy evaporates soon enough into a tale of go-girl empowerment when Maddie’s sorority sisters accept her without qualms. After Maddie gives mom a quick fashion makeover in the women’s room during a shots-of-tequila college party, Deanna is suddenly hot stuff on campus with a boyfriend half her age. She also becomes an advice-dispensing life coach to Maddie and her friends.
Life of the Party could have been an ongoing gag about an out-of-touch suburban mom who thinks she’s down with the kids. Instead, it spreads its laughs around, losing steam in some scenes but maintaining a consistent hum of humor. The jokes are on the awkwardness of cross-generational camaraderie as well as those all-too-pertinent questions surrounding changing direction in midlife. McCarthy is the spark that keeps Life of the Party lit. Her approachable, can-do persona provides wish fulfillment for anyone—but especially for women—convinced that they will never escape the rut they have dug for themselves.
