Movie Review - Wild Oats

Wild Oats (2016)

Starring Shirley MacLaine, Jessica Lange, Billy Connelly, Howard Hesseman, Matt Walsh, and Demi Moore

Directed by Andy Tennant

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

There were a few moments at the beginning of Wild Oats when laughter was vocalized by this reviewer and I wondered why this film got such a limited release in theaters last year.  And then the last hour rolled around and the story fell utterly apart, throwing in a kitchen sink's worth of plot that ends up being laughable...and not in way comedies should be.

Shirley MacLaine is Eva, a recently widowed former school teacher who receives a $5,000,000 life insurance check for her husband rather than the $50,000 one she was supposed to receive.  With the help of her recently divorced best friend Maddie (Jessica Lange), the duo deposit the check and head off to the Canary Islands for a little fun before the insurance company comes knocking with a correction at which point they'll just "play dumb."  This vacation sets up a chaotic set of misadventures involving weird old men, attractive young guys, machine guns, gambling, backstabbing, and insurance fraud -- all of which elicit eye rolls of idiocy.

Awkwardly directed and very poorly written, Wild Oats languishes its two leading ladies in a miserable state of affairs.  Although MacLaine and Lange at least make this watchable, it's not enjoyable in the least.

The RyMickey Rating:  D