"Friendsgiving" has reliable cast but plays like a flat, unfestive get-together

 Friendsgiving (2020) 

“Friendsgiving” definitely plays like a bunch of friends getting together and making a movie over a long weekend. But there isn’t a real movie here, let alone a good one. Actress Nicol Paone has amassed a reliable cast of colorful characters for her writing-directing debut, a bland, unfestive lark that fills the void of a blindingly starry holiday cornucopia by the late Garry Marshall. It all bops along easily enough, throwing a lot at the wall and seeing what sticks, while remaining flat and aimless. Few of these characters ring true or feel like they are actual friends. Instead of big laughs, real emotions, and actual cohesion, “Friendsgiving” has just easy jokes, wacky ideas, and no stakes. 

It is Thanksgiving, and what was supposed to be an intimate day for two Los Angeles best friends turns into a much-larger, very chaotic gathering. Almost-divorced actress and mother Molly (Malin Åkerman) and newly single Abby (Kat Dennings) made plans together, until Jeff (Jack Donnelly), Molly’s hunky, doofy English boyfriend of only a couple weeks, guilt-trips her into staying for dinner. And then Molly and Abby’s friend Lauren (Aisha Tyler) begs to come over when her and her husband Dan's (Deon Cole) dinner plans fall through to later swing by with their two kids. Abby is less than happy when she arrives to Molly’s place, thinking it would just be the two of them. More surprises on Thanksgiving abound, like Molly’s unreliable cougar mother Helen (Jane Seymour) showing up and inviting Molly’s ex-lover Gunnar (Ryan Hansen), and Lauren inviting more friends and more potential lesbian rebounds for Abby.

“Friendsgiving” seems to be aiming for a free-floating slice-of-life if Robert Altman forgot how to write funny, interesting characters and situations. We simply never feel like we know these people, despite being played by likable performers who can do right when the material is there. Malin Åkerman is her naturally charismatic self, but she mostly has to react to everything happening around her. Molly’s career seems to have been launched by an action movie, “Pluto Riders,” which any stranger she bumps into gushes about, but we never get a sense of her work as an actress or why "Pluto Riders" even matters. As Abby, the dependably blowsy yet comically dry Kat Dennings is more engaging but whiny as Abby, and her FaceTime calls with her loud, domineering Italian mother and sister are sort of amusing the first time. There’s a strange device where all of Abby’s would-be girlfriends look into the camera and read off their own dating profile; of them, Chelsea Peretti at least brings a weird spontaneity as Claire, a spacey, earthy “shawoman.” Comedians Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, and Fortune Feimster also pop up as Abby’s trio of “Fairy Gay Mothers” in a shroom-hallucination sequence. Their likely improvisational riffing on names of different lesbian types is a funnier bit than anything on the written page. 

It isn’t unbearable to sit through, but “Friendsgiving” has too many clichés and sketches of barely-there characters to gel into anything worthwhile. The rest of the cast just floats in and out, vying for attention. Aisha Tyler, typecast as the barb-ready best friend, does get in a few choice lines as Lauren. Even if this is one more unfunny comedy Jane Seymour didn’t really need to make (the other most recent being “The War with Grandpa”), she vaguely makes her toned-down reprise of “Kitty Kat” from “Wedding Crashers” work. However, just what is Christine Taylor asked to do here? She might be the wife of producer Ben Stiller, but Taylor scrunches up her face without saying actual words as Botox-obsessed guest Brianne. Given the dreaded blooper reel during the end credits of “Friendsgiving,” these friends are clearly having fun. It’s just too bad the viewer feels excluded from the party.

Grade: C -

Saban Films will release “Friendsgiving” (95 min.) into theaters, on demand and digital October 23, 2020, followed by a DVD/Blu-ray release October 27, 2020.