Remembering one of the best days in your life is a wonderful thing. That’s the nature of Tina Fey’s amazing performance in Whisky Tango Foxtrot. The film begins quick with a thematically uninteresting tone as it tries to set up the call to adventure. In return, it delivers a film that is your typically rushed biopic that wants to cram everything in. But unlike some others, the film comes packed with great performances and a lot of great jokes.
It takes a minute to pick up steam but when it gets rolling it’s ambitious enough to keep the interest flowing. But the film is only an underlying vehicle to just showcase more Tina Fey. Martin Freeman brings in enough charisma, as well as bearable male character in the film, though actor Steven Peacocke takes you on a rollercoaster ride of “is this Hugh Grant?” And that just makes the film just darn fun.
The film missed the opportunity to make any form of comedic satire of wartime journalism and the worldview today. But it does give you a well structured romantic comedy that just so happens to take place there. It contains jokes that come off typical when read, but the delivery from every actor and extra with a line is easily on point. It’s only that this is just off-kilter with the lackluster screenplay handed off by Tina Fey cohort Robert Carlock. At points the writing treads Lifetime movie level, but for what the film manages to do right and deliver, it mostly cancels it out.
The story eventually becomes the focal point as it intensifies in the second and third act. It’s a film that is just so well documented, that it allows the film to show naturalism around it scape, which is beneficial for a setting like this. When a bombing happens, it feels a little real because it doesn’t shy away from the ubiquitous knowledge of how bad the war is. But as much as it adds to the story, the true emotional shock value isn’t the spearheaded vision that it wanted.
For Carlock this film just acts as a way for him to have a screen credit, but it’s that he just wrote an outline into a film. There are moments that should’ve been explored more instead of trying to make old people feel cool with drugs, alcohol and hanging around a bunch of young people. If it wasn’t for the cast the it would become a forgotten film about a war that at one point was a forgotten war in the media.
This film doesn’t try to shy itself from the intentions it pulls from start to finish. It’s not extremely rewarding, but it is fun and enjoyable for whoever loves Tina Fey enough to faint when she waves at you.
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