Sandra Oh has been acting for decades and she’s mostly been considered a drama actress. This is thanks to roles on Grey’s Anatomy and Killing Eve where she was nominated for Primetime Emmys numerous times. But she started out in comedies before she was a household name in the 1997 movie Bean and the HBO comedy Arli$$. Even her roles in Under the Tuscan Sun and Sideways can be seen more as light comedies as she was mostly the supporting characters in both respective movies.
So, you can understand why she seems to have so much fun in Hulu’s Quiz Lady playing a middle-aged ne’er do well Jenny Yum holding on to whatever youth and vitality she still thinks she can muster as she realizes she can be a “life coach” now. Jenny more or less forces (and maybe kidnaps) her younger, geekier sister Amy (Awkwafina) into auditioning for a popular nightly game show Can’t Stop the Quiz, a Jeopardy!-style show hosted by Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell). Amy lives a ho-hum life working as the neglected worker at an office job and in a duplex apartment where she is constantly badgered by her crotchety elderly neighbor, Francine (Holland Taylor).
Amy and Jenny are estranged mostly because Jenny is very flighty jumping from one job goal to another. Years earlier, Jenny left her pug dog, Mr. Linguini, with Amy as she was going to addition for The Real World. Now, Amy’s life revolves around watch the game show every night as she feels that since McTeer never missed taping a show, she shouldn’t miss watching it. But Amy is actually very smart as well and watches the show knowing the answer before the contestants.
One day, Amy and Jenny get a call from the nursing home where their mother is staying thinking she died. But she’s actually fled with a boyfriend they didn’t know because she’s massively indebt to a loan shark, Ken (Jon “Dumbfoundead” Park). Amy finds herself having to take Jenny in, who is living out of her car, as Jenny explains she thought she was going to have to spend time anyway since they thought their mother was dead.
Upon seeing Amy watch the show, Jenny unknowingly takes a video of her answering each question and posts it online. Overnight, Amy becomes an online-media sensation and criticized as she becomes more popular. And this leads to Ken stealing Mr. Linguini and giving them little time to pay off their mother’s debts. So, Jenny more or less forces her sister to Philadelphia where they attend a casting session. Despite being nervous at first (and with the help of drugs such as speed), Amy wins and makes it on the show to compete against Ron Heacock (Jason Schwartzman) a smary snooty man who’s won multiple times and is hoping to break the record during the taping Amy is a contestant.
What makes the movie work is the chemistry between Oh and Awakwafina. I get the feeling Oh has been waiting for years for this role to fall in her lap. Just like Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings, she doesn’t hold back and you can tell that she’s playing the role like someone who’s probably an amalgam of people she’s known. And Awakwafina sometimes goes overboard into Melissa McCarthy/Tiffany Haddish zone with some of her roles. But she manages to pull off some great laughs playing the straight to Oh’s comic relief.
Thankfully Jessica Yu, as director, keeps the comedy from resorting to cheap shots. What little low-brow/gross-out humor there is only is minimum. And she reigns in Ferrell, who plays McTeer as if Mr. Rogers was a game show host. You can’t help but imagine Ferrell’s famous SNL parody of Alex Trebek as McTeer whose quirk is that he wears a different bow-tie on each show that he hangs on the walls.
There’s also a nice cameo at the end that I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but it works more touching than it does as humurous considering what has happened since filming ended. However, I feel the casting of Oh, Awkwafina and Park along with the directing by Yu is another sign of Hollywood not having too much faith in non-white cast members. This movie should’ve at least given the theatrical release of No Hard Feelings.
The production and release has been a long one that originated as a Netflix movie before moving to Hulu in 2021. As studios are more willing to release movies in theaters rather than streaming as the Covid pandemic has ended, this along with the Emmy-nominated Prey is another example of studios still out of touch with audiences. Crazy Rich Asians was a success years ago and Everything Everywhere All at Once was a box-office success and Oscar winner so people are more willing to see diversity in movies.
Also, there’s hardly anything in this movie that makes it about Asian culture except their names and one reference to a past event. This is a story of two sisters having to work together in the most outrageous way. The movie was one of the most streamed movies for two weeks in the early half of November, so that shows audiences are interested in seeing something different every now and again.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 