Life of the Party (2018) * *

Directed by:  Ben Falcone

Starring:  Melissa McCarthy, Stephen Root, Jacki Weaver, Matt Walsh, Julie Bowen, Maya Rudolph, Gillian Jacobs, Debby Ryan, Molly Gordon, Chris Parnell

Stop me if you've heard this plot before.    A mother of a college student decides to enroll in the same college herself.    The daughter is at first none too thrilled, but she comes around.    The mom one-ups the class bully and parties a bunch with the other students.    If this sounds at all familiar, recall Rodney Dangerfield covered a lot of the same ground in Back to School (1986), which mostly worked because it relied heavily on Dangerfield's genius.    Melissa McCarthy assumes the Dangerfield role here.   She is mostly innocuous; and in the beginning babbles on so much you would think she was being paid by the word.    The movie itself is hardly memorable.    I laughed a couple of times, but then just kind of observed the rest with detachment.    There wasn't a whole lot to care about.

I suppose Life of the Party deserves kudos for staying away from projectile bodily fluids, which isn't high praise, but it's at least a positive.    There are keen supporting performances from actors we wish we saw more of, but this is McCarthy's vehicle and her husband Ben Falcone is steering it.   McCarthy and Falcone also wrote the script, and it's puzzling to see how little McCarthy is given to do.    Her likability only goes so far.   I especially enjoyed the off-kilter work of Gillian Jacobs, who plays McCarthy's college-age friend and classmate who recently spent eight years in a coma before beginning her studies.   She has an awkward smile and big eyes, and a funny way of speaking which is endearing.   

McCarthy is Deanna Miles, who drops her daughter off at her dorm for another year of college.    Just as she and her tightwad husband Dan (Walsh) pull off, Dan declares he wants a divorce because he has fallen in love with a local realtor named Marci (Bowen).    Dan and Marci are the villains who get their comeuppance...kind of.    The movie never really goes all the way and makes them full-fledged pricks.    Like the movie itself, there is something held back here.     After the distressing news, Deanna decides to complete the final year of her archaeology studies and earn the degree she started when she got pregnant with her daughter Maddie (Gordon) while in her junior year of college.    Deanna deferred her dreams to be a mom and wife, but now she is taking her life back.

There is a nice setup which falls flat as scene after scene fizzles without a satisfactory payoff.    Even Deanna's awful oral presentation of her class project goes way over the top and then duds out.    There isn't a lot original about Life of the Party and there doesn't necessarily need to be.    But, the movie feels curiously muted and never lets loose.    We keep waiting for it to happen, but it never does, and we are left with a genial comedy that will soon be forgotten.