Moving On (2023)

Directed by Paul Weitz. Starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Roundtree, Sarah Burns, Vachik Mangassarian, Marcel Nahapetian. [R]

Even though I’ve never watched a single episode of “Grace and Frankie”, why does it feel to me like Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have made like a dozen movies together in the last decade? (It’s just two, both from the same year.) Here, they’re estranged friends who reunite at the funeral of a mutual companion, and while Tomlin’s character is satisfied revealing she and the deceased shared a sexual relationship for a short period, Fonda harbors murderous animosity for the widow (McDowell) and plans on bumping him off. Flippant Tomlin’s dry delivery inspires a few smiles, but she and Fonda are stuck with a lot of edgeless, halfhearted material. Thanks to so many years of feisty and self-analytical older ladies onscreen in commercial films, they add mere (figurative) wrinkles to anonymous constructs. Paul Weitz directs as if he’s contractually obligated to participate—where’s the polished lift and freestyle storytelling tempo he brought to projects like About a Boy (with brother Chris) and In Good Company?—and Amanda Jones’ banal music cues do little more than underline how prefab the seriocomic vibe is, how tame its dark designs are. There’s also a subplot occupying only two scenes that makes fun of pearl-clutchers who cry “groomer” (a boy is encouraged to be himself and wear fancy clip-on earrings), but it ends up vanishing without a trace. Weitz also wrote and co-produced. Debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival the year before its release.

40/100