"Mack & Rita" - Film Review
Mack & Rita is Diane Keaton’s look back at the youthful, comedic eccentricities that put her name on the map. Keaton plays the older version of Mack in this body-swap romp through Los Angeles Instagram influencer culture. Her younger version (Elizabeth Lail) is thirty years old, but says she has always felt like an old soul. Her friends often tease her for her “grandma style.”
At Carla’s (Taylour Paige) bachelorette party in Palm Springs, Mack visits a spiritual regression tent in an abandoned parking lot run by a bizarre guru (Simon Rex). Mack wishes that she could be a seventy-year-old woman so she can do whatever she pleases and be free from societal expectations. Her wish is granted, and Mack magically becomes seventy years old. She creates a false identity as Mack’s “Aunt Rita” (Keaton) and ends up learning more about herself than she ever expected.
Gravitas Premiere
Mack & Rita somehow manages to dull the shine that is Paige. She’s relegated to a small best friend role who is shoved aside in favor of Aunt Rita’s burgeoning relationship with Jack (Dustin Milligan), the dog sitter. The film’s only funny moments come from Carla and Mack’s assistant (Patti Harrison). Unfortunately, the film believes the better use of its time and comedic efforts is in poorly executed physical comedy by Keaton. In a sense, it’s not Keaton’s fault. Poking fun at older women doing Pilates feels like it belongs in 2005, and the scene goes on for far too long.
The film is loosely (emphasis on loosely) about learning to accept yourself for the individual and interesting person that you are. To embrace the eccentricities that are all your own. However, there are still “jokes” about a character’s weight. Jack mentions that his personality is so good because he was overweight as a teen and that gave him time to develop his personality. It’s a strange note to hit in a movie that wants to celebrate individuality so aggressively. In essence, the movie is saying be yourself, but not if you’re overweight. That’s something you need to overcome in order to be able to love yourself.
Gravitas Premiere
When Mack & Rita is stripped down to its nuts and bolts, it’s about a woman finding the confidence she needs to become an Instagram influencer. That’s exactly what the world needs, more influencers. Mack loves all of the brand deals that open to her when she’s Rita. The only reason she wants to be 30 again is because…well, the movie doesn’t really know why Mack wants to be young again. They just know they have to get to the credits somehow. The lame excuse the film tries to pass off as motive is that Mack doesn’t want to be old, she just wants to be sure of herself and what she wants from life. This could make sense if Mack wasn’t already sure of who she was and what she wanted at the beginning of the movie. She’s just awkward. There’s no huge character development that warrants this body-swap narrative.
Mack & Rita is a film you’ve seen before. Sure, the plot and the characters are varied slightly, but there’s nothing new or different here. There are six montages in the meager 95-minute runtime, and that alone demonstrates how surface-level the script is. Skip the trip to the theatre and watch your personal favorite body-swap story instead.
Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Letterboxd, and YouTube.