Erinn Hayes Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘A Christmas Story Christmas,’ starring Peter Billingsley, Erinn Hayes, River Drosche, Julianna Layne, Julie Hagerty, Scott Schwartz and RD Robb

December 25, 2022

by Carla Hay

Pictured clockwise, from upper left: Peter Billingsley, Julie Hagerty, Erinn Hayes, Julianna Lane and River Drosche in “A Christmas Story Christmas” (Photo by Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros. Pictures/HBO Max)

Directed by Clay Kaytis

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1973, in Hohman, Indiana, and briefly in Chicago, the comedy film “A Christmas Story Christmas” (a sequel to the 1983 comedy film “A Christmas Story”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Ralph Parker, his wife and their two children go back to his hometown for the Christmas holiday after his father dies, and he feels the pressure of taking over as the family’s Christmas patriarch and fulfilling his dream to become a published writer by the end of the year.

Culture Audience: “A Christmas Story Christmas” will appeal primarily to fans of “A Christmas Story” and heartwarmng comedies about families during the Christmas season.

Scott Schwartz, Peter Billingsley and RD Robb in “A Christmas Story Christmas” (Photo by Yana Blajeva/Warner Bros. Pictures/HBO Max)

The very thin plot of “A Christmas Story Christmas” gets a considerable boost by its effective use of familiar Christmas movie formulas and relatable characters. It’s a sweet and sentimental sequel that lacks the rebellious spark of 1983’s “A Christmas Story,” but still has enough charm, despite some awkward handling of serious issues. Ralph Parker (formerly known as Ralphie Parker) now has a midlife crisis and grief over the death of his father.

“A Christmas Story” is based on Jean Shepherd’s 1966 semi-autobiographical collection of short stories “In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.” “A Christmas Story” was told from the perspective of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker (played by Peter Billingsley) in 1940, with hindsight voiceover narration by Shepherd in the role of the adult Ralph. Most movie fans know that “A Christmas Story” has become one of the most beloved American Christmas movies of all time, with its most memorable aspect being Ralphie’s obsession to get a BB gun for Christmas—specifically, a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle—despite his parents’ objections to Ralphie getting this toy rifle as a gift.

A very inferior direct-to-video 2012 sequel called “A Christmas Story 2” featured a teenage Ralphie (played by Braeden Lemasters) and had the same main characters but played by entirely different cast members. “A Christmas Story Christmas” can be considered a true sequel to “A Christmas Story,” since it reunites several of the original cast members, led by Billingsley reprising his role as Ralph. Clay Kaytis directed “A Christmas Story Christmas” and wrote the movie’s screenplay with Nick Schenk.

It’s not necessary to watch or know about “A Christmas Story” before seeing “A Christmas Story Christmas” (which has some brief flashbacks to the first movie), but it does help to bring a deeper understanding of why Ralph has been hit so hard emotionally by the unexpected death of his father. Just like in “A Christmas Story,” adult Ralph (played by Billingsley) provides voiceover narration. But instead of looking back on his childhood, Ralph is commenting on his current life as a 42-year-old aspiring writer in 1973.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” has some simplistic and hokey dialogue that is par for the course for a typical Christmas movie. In the movie’s opening scene, which offers a panoramic view of the inside of Ralph’s modest house in Chicago, he can be heard making this comment in a voiceover: “When you’re a kid, all you want is the perfect Christmas. When you’re a parent, all you want is for Christmas to be perfect. But sometimes, if we’re lucky, the yuletide stars shine full upon us ina rare moment of truth. And how we act in those moments can forever seal our fate.”

Viewers soon find out that Ralph has quit an unnamed day job to spend an unspecified period of time trying to write what he hopes will be his Great American Novel. He’s been working on a science-fiction book called “Neptune’s Oblivion.” Ralph and his supportive wife Sandy (played by Erinn Hayes) came to this agreement: “I had to be published by the end of the year, or I’d pack up my dream and return to the rat race.” When the story begins, it’s mid-way through December 1973, and he still hasn’t been published.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” skimps on details about how Ralph and Sandy are paying their bills during the time that Ralph has been working full-time on his novel. It’s not mentioned if Sandy works outside the home. It’s not mentioned if Ralph and Sandy have been living off of their savings. But what the movie does mention repeatedly is that money is so tight for this couple, they sometimes run out of food and can’t afford to replace the faulty radiator for Ralph’s 1966 Plymouth.

Ralph and Sandy have two children: fun-loving son Mark (played by River Drosche), who’s 10 or 11 years old, and precocious daughter Julie (played by Julianna Layne), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. Sandy and Ralph try to hide their money problems from their children, in order not to worry the kids. An early scene in the movie shows that the family has run out of milk, so Ralph tries to convince the children that it will be fun to eat their Cocoa Puffs cereal with orange juice instead of milk. The kids are predictably disgusted.

Ralph has sent his 2,000-page manuscript for “Neptune’s Oblivion” to 16 book publishers. Out of those 16 publishers, 14 have rejected the manuscript so far. Ralph meets an executive (played by Ian Porter) at one of the last two book publishers that haven’t given him a response yet. The executive tells Ralph that his manuscript is rejected because it’s too long and not the kind of book the company is looking for right now.

After getting this bad news, a dejected Ralph goes home and gets a phone call with even worse news: His father has suddenly died. (The cause of death is not mentioned in the story.) Just as he does in “A Christmas Story,” Ralph affectionately calls his father “The Old Man.” n real life, Darren McGavin, who had the role of Ralphie’s father in A” Christmas Story,” died in 2006, at the age of 83.

Ralph’s parents had been planning to go to Chicago for the Christmas holiday to spend time with Ralph and his family. But now, Ralph and his family must go to his hometown of Hohman, Indiana, to spend the Christmas holiday with Ralph’s widowed mother (played by Julie Hagerty), who doesn’t have a first name in the movie. Hagerty replaces Melinda Dillon, who had the role of Ralphie’s mother in “A Christmas Story.”

The rest of “A Christmas Story Christmas” involves subplots that are variations of Ralph trying not to feel like a failure when he goes back to Hohman. His father was the family’s “Mr. Christmas” patriarch, who led the way in the family’s Christmas activities. Now that his father has died, Ralph feels it’s a huge void that Ralph can’t possibly fill.

However, Ralph’s mother makes Ralph promise that he will take over the patriarch role to make sure that the family’s Christmas holidays are as happy as possible, even this year, when the family is grieving over the loss of Ralph’s father. She also asks Ralph to write the obituary for Ralph’s father for the local newspaper. Meanwhile, Ralph is stressed-out over whether or not he and Sandy can afford to get the gifts that their kids want for Christmas. And time is running out on the deadline for him to become a published writer.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” features the return of “A Christmas Story” characters Flick (played by Scott Schwartz) and Schwartz (played by RD Robb), who were Ralph’s childhood friends. Flick is now the owner of a pub called Flick’s Tavern, while Schwartz is a barfly who lives with his mother, is frequently unemployed, and has run up a Flick’s Tavern bar tab that no one expects him to pay. A running joke in the movie is that some of the male customers go to Flick’s Tavern to avoid going home to their wives. And when these wives call the tavern to ask if their husbands are there, Flick or someone else always lies and says that these husbands aren’t there.

Most of the characters outside of the Parker Family, Flick and Schwartz don’t have much of an impact on the story. Larry Novack (played by some Henry Miller), a disheveled regular customer at Flick’s Tavern, is described as former classmate from high school, where he used to be a football star. Delbert Bumpus (played by Davis Murphy), who’s about 11 or 12 years old, is described as “the smartest member of the hillbilly family next door” to where Ralph’s mother lives. Delbert is a somewhat bratty kid whose other family members are never seen in the movie.

Zack Ward reprises his Scut Farkus role from “A Christmas Story,” in a cameo that lasts for less than 5 minutes. Scut’s current occupation is revealed. Viewers of “A Christmas Story Christmas” will get to see if Scut is still a bully or not. Also making a quick cameo is returning cast member Ian Petrella, as Ralph’s young brother Randy Parker, who is now a successful businessman who travels around the world.

Speaking of bullies, “A Christmas Story Christmas” has two unnamed adolescents (played by Cailean Galloway and Alistair Galloway) repeatedly wreaking havoc in the snow by driving snowmobiles and plowing into snowmen made by Mark and Julie outside the house of Ralph’s mother. And it wouldn’t be “A Christmas Story” movie if it didn’t have Christmas shopping and a visit to Santa Claus at Higbee’s, the biggest department store in Hohman.

Most of the scenarios in “A Christmas Story Christmas” aren’t suspenseful but they bring some laughs (and some cringes) in how the adult Ralph and his family members handle some of these situations. There are some quirky moments, such as when Ralph and his mother reveal that they have an irrational fear/dislike of Christmas carolers who go door-to-door, but Sandy feels the opposite way. Sandy is also an ice skating enthusiast. You can easily predict what happens when someone goes ice skating in a comedy film.

Some of the acting is a little stiff, but “A Christmas Story Christmas” is so good-natured the weaker elements of the story do not ruin the movie. Billingsley does a perfectly fine job in the lead role of Ralph, while Drosche and Lane have some cute moments as Mark and Julie. None of the cast members is terrible in these roles, but no one truly stands out as a breakout star either.

“A Christmas Story Christmas” is a pleasant movie that hits all the expected beats of a Christmas film that was made to appeal to a family-friendly audience. Because “A Christmas Story Christmas” is told from an adult character’s perspective, Christmas takes on a more serious meaning than just childhood pranks and wanting a certain toy for Christmas. “A Christmas Story Christmas” is still very much a comedy, but it has more maturity in this likable sequel story where its merits outweigh its flaws.

HBO Max premiered “A Christmas Story Christmas” on November 17, 2022.

Review: ‘Bill & Ted Face the Music,’ starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter

August 27, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Bill & Ted Face the Music”

Directed by Dean Parisot

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of Earth (particularly in the fictional San Dimas, California) and in outer space, the comedy film “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and a few Asians) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two middle-aged men who used to be rock stars face several obstacles when they try one last time to find a song that will save the world.

Culture Audience: “Bill & Ted Face the Music” will appeal primarily to fans of star Keanu Reeves and the previous “Bill & Ted” movies, but most people will be disappointed by this incoherent, not-very-funny sequel.

Samara Weaving, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” (Photo courtesy of Orion Pictures)

After years of discussions, false starts and pre-production problems, the long-awaited comedy sequel “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has arrived—and it lands with the kind of clumsy thud that happens when the movie’s title characters use their time-traveling phone booth to crash-land in a different era. The movie is overstuffed with too many bad ideas that are sloppily executed. And the end result is an uninspired mess that brings few laughs.

The movie is the follow-up to 1989’s “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and 1991’s inferior “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.” “Bill & Ted Face the Music” is by far the worst of the three movies, which all star Keanu Reeves as Ted Theodore Logan and Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston. You’d think that with all the years that have passed between the second and third movies that it would be enough time to come up with a great concept for the third film. But no. “Bill & Ted Face the Music” writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, who also wrote the first two “Bill & Ted” movies, have added several new characters and unnecessary subplots as a way to distract from the story’s very weak plot.

In “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” the dimwitted duo Bill and Ted were high-school students in the fictional Sam Dimas, California, with dreams of making it big as a two-man rock band called Wyld Stallyns. Bill and Ted were on the verge of flunking out of school unless they got an A+ grade on their final history exam. Through a series of bizarre circumstances, they’re visited from another planet by someone named Rufus (played by George Carlin), who gave Bill and Ted a time-travel phone booth.

Bill and Ted used the time-traveling booth to collect real-life historical people (Napoleon, Billy the Kid, Ludwig van Beethoven, Genghis Khan, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud and Joan of Arc), in order to bring them back to San Dimas as part of Bill and Ted’s school presentation for their history exam. Two British princesses from another century named Elizabeth and Joanna ended up as Bill and Ted’s girlfriends and decided to stay in San Dimas with Bill and Ted.

In “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey,” Bill and Ted fought evil robot replicas of themselves that were sent from the future to alter Bill and Ted’s destiny of becoming rock stars who can save the world. Along the way, the real Bill and Ted also battled with Death (played by William Sadler) by playing a series of games. Bill married Joanna, Ted married Elizabeth, and each couple had a child born in the same year. And (this won’t be a spoiler if you see “Bill & Ted Face the Music”) Wyld Stallyns also became a superstar act.

In “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” it’s explained in the beginning of the film that Wyld Stallyns’ success was short-lived. In the subsequent years, Bill and Ted made many failed attempts at a comeback. They are now unemployed musicians who are trying not to be bitter over their lost fame and fortune. But their wives are starting to get fed up with Bill and Ted’s irresponsible lifestyle.

Joanna (played by Jayma Mays) and Elizabeth (played by Erinn Hayes) are the family breadwinners because Bill and Ted blew all their rock-star money and don’t have steady incomes. Bill and Joanna’s daughter Wilhelmina “Billie” S. Logan (played by Samara Weaving) and Ted and Elizabeth’s daughter Thea Theadora Preston (played by Brigette Lundy-Paine) are both 24 years old and take after their fathers, in that they are both unemployed and not very smart but they are passionate about music.

The movie’s poorly written screenplay assumes that many viewers have already seen the first “Bill & Ted” movies to understand some of the jokes. But even people who saw the first two movies might have seen the movies so long ago that these jokes won’t land very well anyway. Some of the jokes in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” have a little better context if you saw the first two “Bill & Ted” movies, but references to the first two movies make the most sense in the scenes with the wives of Bill and Ted.

In the beginning of “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” a wedding reception is taking place where Bill and Ted give a toast to the newlyweds and then inevitably give a terrible music performance. The newlyweds are Ted’s younger brother Deacon (played by Beck Bennett) and Missy (played by Amy Stoch, reprising her role from the first two “Bill & Ted” movies), who was married to Bill’s father in the first movie in a May-December romance. Missy is not that much older than Bill, and in the first “Bill & Ted” movie, there’s a running joke that Bill lusts after his stepmother Missy.

In “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” it’s mentioned in a voiceover that in the years since the second movie took place, Missy divorced Bill’s father (who is not seen in “Bill & Ted Face the Music”), and then married and divorced Ted’s policeman father (played by Hal Landon Jr., who reprises his role as Ted’s stern father), who is now chief of the local police. And now, Missy is married to Ted’s younger brother Deacon, who is also a cop. These awkward family dynamics could have been mined for hilarious situations and more jokes in the movie, but they fall by the wayside because the movie gets caught up in some messy subplots that get tangled up with each other.

Bill, Ted, Joanna and Elizabeth are in couples counseling with Dr. Taylor Wood (played by Jillian Bell), who is baffled over why both couples want to be in counseling sessions with her at the same time, as if it’s a double date. Bell is a terrific comedic actress, but the dull lines she’s given in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” are so listless and unimaginative, that her talent is wasted in this film. It’s eventually revealed that unless Bill and Ted change their destiny, their wives will leave them and their children will be estranged from Bill and Ted.

How do Bill and Ted find out that they can change their destiny? It’s because someone from outer space comes to San Dimas to tell them the world is ending and can only be saved if Bill and Ted find the song that will not only unite the world but also restore reality as they know it. The visitor from outer space is named Kelly (played by Kristen Schaal), who is sympathetic to Bill and Ted and wants to help them. She has arrived on Earth at the behest of her mother called the Great Leader (played by Holland Taylor), a jaded matriarch who doesn’t have much faith that Bill and Ted can deliver the song that can save the world.

Bill and Ted’s time-traveling phone booth is brought back from outer space (with a hologram of Rufus, using brief archival footage of the late Carlin), so Bill and Ted jump back and forth to different times and places in their quest to find the song. Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters and Nirvana fame) has a cameo as himself in one of these scenes. Meanwhile, the “world is ending” scenes include historical figures ending up in the wrong places or people suddenly disappearing, as if to show that history and reality are being warped into an irreversible void.

The movie also spends a lot of screen time showing Bill and Ted encountering different versions of themselves in future and/or alternate realities. These scenarios include Bill and Ted as old men in a nursing home; Bill and Ted with bodybuilder physiques in prison; and Bill and Ted as successful rock stars with fake British accents. All of these scenes mostly serve the purpose to show Reeves and Winter acting silly in various hairstyles, costumes and prosthetic makeup. However, almost none of these scenes are genuinely funny

And if all of that weren’t enough to overstuff the movie, there’s a simultaneous storyline with Billie and Thea doing their own time traveling. While in San Dimas, space alien Kelly met the two daughters and explained the urgency of how Bill and Ted have to save the world. In order to help their fathers, Billie and Thea decide they want to create the ultimate band that can accompany the Wyld Stallyns when they play the song that will save the world. Kelly provides Billie and Thea with their own time-traveling spacecraft, and so off Thea and Billie go to recruit top musicians to join the band.

They end up recruiting Jimi Hendrix (played by DazMann Still, doing a barely passable impersonation) and Louis Armstrong (played by Jeremiah Craft, doing an awful, mugging impersonation), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (played by Daniel Dorr, doing an average impersonation), plus two fictional musicians: Chinese violinist Ling Lum (played by Sharon Gee) from 2600 B.C. and North African drummer Grom (played by Patty Anne Miller) from 11,500 B.C. And because apparently no A-list superstars rapper wanted to be in this train-wreck movie, Kid Cudi (playing himself) is also in this makeshift band.

Meanwhile, the Great Leader grows impatient with the bungling Bill and Ted, so she sends a robot named Dennis Caleb McCoy (played by Anthony Carrigan) to assassinate Bill and Ted. The robot keeps announcing that his name is Dennis Caleb McCoy and that’s supposed to be a joke—but it’s a joke that gets old by the second time it’s said. And it comes as no surprise that Death (with Sadler reprising the role) is in this “Bill & Ted” movie too, which recycles some plot elements of “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.”

A huge part of the appeal of the first two “Bill & Ted” movies is that these characters were young and dumb. Their “party on, dude” attitude and antics were meant to be laughed at because it was a parody of how a lot of young people act when they have the freedom to be reckless. But now that Bill and Ted are middle-aged, their doltish mindset isn’t so funny anymore, which is why the filmmakers came up with the gimmick of having Bill and Ted’s children take up the mantle of being the “young and dumb” characters in this movie.

Lundy-Paine as Thea gives the better progeny performance, since she’s believable as Ted’s daughter. And even though her body language seems a bit forced and awkward at times, Lundy-Paine shows a knack for comedic timing. Unfortunately, Weaving is miscast as Bill’s daughter Billie, because Billie doesn’t look like she inherited any of the mannerisms that would make her recognizable as Bill’s daughter. In other words, her “dimwit” act is not credible at all. And it might be a compliment to say that Weaving is just too smart for this movie.

Reeves and Winter do exactly what you expect them to do: act like middle-aged versions of Bill and Ted. But the movie looks like it was thrown together haphazardly instead of being a great and original idea that writers Matheson and Solomon had the time to work on for all these years. You don’t have to see the first two “Bill & Ted” movies to understand what’s going on in “Bill & Ted Face the Music” because so much of the story is lazily written dreck that will confuse some people anyway. Seeing the first two “Bill & Ted” movies right before seeing “Bill & Ted Face the Music” might also underscore how much better the first two movies were.

And for a movie that’s supposed to center on music, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” has original songs that are utterly generic and forgettable. There used to be a time when a “Bill &Ted” soundtrack was sort of a big deal in the music business. Not anymore.

Just like the misguided “Dumb and Dumber” and “Zoolander” sequels that had the original comedic duo stars but came decades after the original movies, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” arrives too late and falls very short of expectations that weren’t very high anyway. Whereas the first “Bill & Ted” movie sparingly used the idea of Bill and Ted confronting their alternate-reality selves, “Bill & Ted Face the Music” over-uses this concept as filler for a shambolic, insipid plot that is the very definition of “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.” “Bill & Ted Face the Music” is like the equivalent of loud, screeching feedback from an amped guitar that is grossly out of tune and ends up creating a lot of unnecessary and irritating noise.

Orion Pictures will release “Bill & Ted Face the Music” in U.S. cinemas and on VOD on August 28, 2020.

Review: ‘Holly Slept Over,’ starring Nathalie Emmanuel, Josh Lawson, Britt Lower, Erinn Hayes and Ron Livingston

March 4, 2020

by Carla Hay

“Holly Slept Over”

Directed by Joshua Friedlander

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sex comedy “Holly Slept Over” focuses on two middle-class white American married couples and the biracial British free-spirited woman who had an affair with one of the women when they were in college.

Culture Clash: The men are bored with their sex lives and think of ways to spice things up in their marriages, while complaining that their wives are too uptight to agree to their ideas.

Culture Audience: “Holly Slept Over” will appeal mostly to people who want to see a formulaic comedy about a threesome.

Britt Lower and Josh Lawson in “Holly Slept Over” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

The concept of two women and a man in a sexual threesome has been done so many times in movies and TV shows that the comedy film “Holly Slept Over” brings nothing new or clever to this idea. In fact, for most of this approximately 90-minute movie (written and directed by Joshua Friedlander), a hoped-for threesome is pretty much what the men in the movie obsess over, as soon as one of guys finds out that his wife had a sexual relationship in college with a woman who wants to see the wife again. It’s a flimsy basis for a story when the characters are as two-dimensional as the ones in this movie.

“Holly Slept Over” is the very definition of a “sex comedy,” because sex is the primary focus of all the main characters. The film’s opening scene is of friends/neighbors Noel (played by Josh Lawson) and Pete (played by Ron Livingston) barbecuing in a backyard and complaining about their sex lives. Pete warns Noel, who’s been trying to start a family with his wife, that having kids will kill a couple’s sex life. Pete tells Noel that he knows this from experience, because he and his own wife rarely have sex, ever since they’ve been raising children.

Pete confesses to Noel that because he’s had no satisfying release for his sex drive, he’s resorted to ejaculating on his wife’s breasts when she’s asleep. Pete also says that he’s been able to clean off the “evidence” without her knowing what happened. “Maybe I’m a monster,” Pete says unapologetically. “I defiled my wife. It’s the best feeling I’ve had in months.” Meanwhile, Noel’s biggest complaint about sex with his own wife is that it’s too boring.

As this conversation is taking place, Noel’s wife Audra (played by Britt Lower) and Pete’s wife Marnie (played by Erinn Hayes) are in the kitchen having their own candid talk. Audra hasn’t been able to get pregnant with Noel, and she reveals that she’s worried that she might not be able to conceive a child, ever since she miscarried an unplanned pregnancy when she was a junior in high school.

Audra also tells Marnie that she’s gotten an unexpected message from her former college roommate Holly, who contacted her out of the blue after they stopped speaking to each other 12 years ago. Holly wants to see Audra again, but Audra tells Marnie that she’s not interested in seeing Holly again. Audra says that when she and Holly were in college, their friendship ended because Holly was “too wild and free-spirited for me,” because Holly drank too much, did too many drugs, and slept around.

It isn’t long before the truth comes out about the real reason why Audra is uncomfortable with reconnecting with Holly. Audra tells Noel that she and Holly used to be lovers, but Audra describes it as an experimental fling. She insists that she hasn’t been with another woman since Holly, and she asks Noel to keep this a secret between the two of them. Noel is surprised by Audra’s revelation, because he always thought that Audra was sexually conservative.

“Holly Slept Over” uses a predictable trope that’s often seen in stories about two couples. One couple is “nice” (usually boring) and the other couple is “no filter” (usually quarrelling). It’s obvious within the first 10 minutes of the film which type of couple is which. Noel and Audra are both lawyers: He’s a tax attorney, and she’s a criminal-defense attorney. It’s not mentioned what Pete and Marnie do for a living, probably because viewers won’t care.

Another thing that’s obvious in this movie is that both couples have no privacy boundaries, because they blab sexual secrets about their spouses to someone who’s part of the other couple. It should come as no surprise then that Noel tells Pete about Audra’s affair with Holly. Pete then tells Marnie, who then tells Audra that she knows about Holly too.

It’s very easy to see that this movie was written and directed by a man, because the conversations between the two women don’t ring true and sound like they’re from a perspective of someone projecting male fantasies. For example, when Marnie and Audra talk about the affair with Holly that is no longer a secret, Marnie tells Audra that she’s impressed that Audra knows how to “dig clam.”

It’s the kind of talk that sounds like what you’d hear at a frat party instead of an authentic conversation between two adult female friends. That’s not to say that women don’t describe sex in raunchy terms. But when women talk about sex, they aren’t very likely to compare their private parts to sea creatures.

Despite the fact that three of the five main characters are women, a great deal of the movie is focused on what the husbands want and need, and the women’s wants and needs are secondary to the men’s. We know this because most of the complaining in the movie comes from the men feeling deprived by their “uptight” wives who aren’t giving them the kind of sex that they want. It didn’t occur to the filmmakers to show much of the women’s perspectives, since the women’s purpose in the movie is to react to what the men want.

For example, the filmmakers seem to want viewers to assume it’s all Marnie’s fault for losing interest in having sex with her husband Pete. However, it’s obvious within the first 10 minutes of the movie that he’s a selfish jerk in other aspects of life—he’s resentful of parental responsibilities because they take time away from when he wants to have sex—which probably has a lot to do with why his wife is turned off by him. Anyone who somewhat brags about sexually violating his wife’s body without her knowledge when she’s asleep (in other words, she didn’t consent) has some seriously unhealthy sexual issues. It tells you what you need to know about what a lousy husband he is.

Because Pete says he has such an unfulfilling sex life, he tries to live vicariously through Noel, whose marriage is happy in comparison to Pete’s marriage. Pete is the one who plants the idea in Noel’s head that Noel should have a threesome with Holly and Audra. Pete essentially berates Noel into thinking that he’ll be a boring wimp if he doesn’t try to have this threesome. After checking out Holly on Instagram and seeing how attractive she is, Noel confesses that the threesome is all he can think about, but he’s doubtful that Audra will agree to it. The two men then start scheming up ways to try to convince Audra to have a threesome with Holly and Noel.

By the time that Holly shows up about 30 minutes into the movie, it’s very easy to see where this story is going to go. Instead of staying at a hotel, Holly has sort of invited herself over to Noel and Audra’s place when she said she wanted to visit. And they didn’t say no. Never mind that Audra has been “estranged” from Holly for years and there’s no guarantee that their reunion will go well. Audra and Noel have let Holly stay over at their place anyway.

And when Holly arrives at their house, with her suitcase in hand, it’s around 8 a.m.—hours before Audra and Noel were expecting her. (How rude.) Holly tells a surprised Noel when he answers the door that she was so eager to get there, that she drove all night. Then, Holly asks to take a shower and a nap at their place, since she’s already there. Audra, who’s nervously taking a bath when Holly arrives, is a little put off by Holly showing up so early. But Audra and Noel clearly want Holly to be in their home, which sets the tone for the rest of her time there.

Holly’s “nap” turns into her sleeping for 11 hours. (An obvious sign that she’s hasn’t given up her partying ways.) Based on Audra’s annoyed reaction at not being able to hang out with Holly, because Holly’s been in a deep sleep, there’s more to Audra’s feelings for Holly than she’s willing to immediately reveal. When Holly wakes up, she and Audra make somewhat awkward apologies to each other for how their college relationship ended.

Audra and Holly ask each other questions about how their lives have been since college. To no one’s surprise, Holly is still single, sexually fluid, and she’s started her own marijuana edibles business called Holly’s Good & Baked. And guess what? She’s brought a gift basket of samples for all three of them to share.

At some point, Noel blurts out that he knows about Audra and Holly’s past sexual relationship. Audra seems to be horrified and embarrassed that Noel has even mentioned it. Holly then says that she’s done with having flings and only wants to have sex in “meaningful relationships.” The disappointed look on Noel’s face is all that manipulative Holly needs to start turning on the charm and flattery, because she now knows that she and Noel both have the same ulterior motive. Any adult can see what’s going to happen next in the movie.

To its credit, “Holly Slept Over” does not clutter the story with a lot of unnecessary characters. (The cast and film set are so small that this story could easily be a play.) And the movie telegraphs its intentions from nearly the beginning, so at least it’s up front that the potential threesome is the hook for this film. The problem is that the sparseness of the movie is to the detriment of character development.

The movie gives no indication of what any of these characters’ personal interests are besides sex. Pete complains about how being a parent has ruined his sex life, but the movie doesn’t show how he and Marnie are as parents. About 80% of what Noel and Audra talk about are topics related to their own sex life and how Holly is affecting them sexually. Even the marijuana edibles in the movie are only in the story to loosen up inhibitions for what is obviously going to happen.

The actors do the best that they can with the mediocre script that they’ve been given. As nerdy and insecure Noel, Lawson is the only actor in the cast who brings a playful sense of humor to the awkwardness and jealousy that can arise from a couple bringing a third person into their sex life. Some of his facial expressions are sure to make some viewers laugh at loud.

Livingston’s Pete character is the token crude blowhard that seems to be a required character in every sex comedy. Hayes plays Marnie as someone who can be sassy or shrewish, depending on her mood. (And it’s certainly not easy to be married to someone like Pete.)

Emmanuel portrays Holly as a lot more likable than her actions. Holly tends to do a lot selfish and irresponsible things. She’s also good at quickly figuring out what people want and using that to her advantage.

However, Holly is still a stereotypical “unicorn” (swingers’ terminology for a woman who’s open to dating couples) in movies like this—she’s pretty, available, and mostly invited into the couple’s sex life to fulfill their fantasies, but not get in the way of the couple’s relationship. She’s not there for any deeper meaning. And quite frankly, she’s a lot more disposable than she thinks she is—which is kind of like how someone could describe this movie.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released “Holly Slept Over” on digital and Redbox on March 3, 2020.