(courtesy IMP Awards)
Everyone who’s ever undergone trauma has their own personal port-in-a-storm coping strategy.
Some aren’t healthy while some are so beige healthy they border on a benign obsession which is precisely where Quiz Lady, directed by Jessica You to a script by Jen D’Angelo, finds its titular protagonist night after night at precisely 7pm when long-running game show, Can’t Stop the Quiz, is on.
For Annie Yum (Awkwafina), watching host Terry McTeer (played to nuanced and affectionate parodic perfection by Will Ferrell) has been a calming and constant point in every day since she was four and her father stormed out of their lives, fed up with her mother’s ruinous gambling addiction, and she’s so obsessed with not missing the show that she even sets an alarm to remind her it’s on.
She doesn’t need it, of course, since it’s the fulcrum of a life that’s isn’t finding any satisfaction or enjoyment at work (at the mischievously named accountancy firm CPYay!) or in the unending responsibilities which have suffocated her small “l” life into an endless stream of muted fashion choices, and a stooped physicality which you suspect reflects the trodden down ex-dreamer within.
One of those responsibilities is the care of Annie’s now elderly mum who, at the start of the film, runs away from her retirement home to gamble some more in Macau, with the departure announced, rather tactlessly and with a giggling “oops!” mentality announced by one of the home’s employees Marge (Angela Trimbur), as “she’s no longer with us”.
Both Annie and her no-hoper sister Jenny, played with a deliciously over-the-top hilarity by Sandra Oh who absolutely nails the character’s mix of aspirational vulnerability and frivolously brainless approach to life, assume the worst, and while it’s soon cleared up that their mother has absconded not died, it still brings them together for what Annie hopes will be a mercilessly short if chaotic few days.
That is until a loan shark named Ken (Jon “Dumbfoundead” Park) finds Annie, thanks to a viral video Jenny posts of her younger sister’s answering every question correctly on Can’t Stop the Quiz which brings lots of unwanted attention, and announces they can’t have Annie’s dog, Mr Linguini back until they’ve paid gtheir mother’s $80,000 gambling debt.
Cue a madcap race to get the funds which, surprise surprise involves Annie getting onto Can’t Stop the Quiz and besting reigning champ and self-confessed nice guy Ron Heacock (Jason Schwartzman) who, not even remotely a spoiler alert, isn’t no nice at all.
Narrative-wise there aren’t a ton of surprises in Quiz Lady but that’s okay because while the story is reasonably but not terminally predictable – the movie is one of those films that uses its predictability to gloriously pleasing and highly entertaining effect – the constituent parts are an absolute blast.
Whether it’s the two sisters getting to Philly to audition for the show in, let’s just say, not entirely normal way where they are forced to stay at a colonial-themed inn where Tony Hale (in fine form), the owner, dresses as Ben Franklin and does his best to maintain period authenticity while computers bleep and phones ring around him, or Jenny storming in to see Ken to get Mr Linguini back which doesn’t go anything like you think it will, Quiz Lady is absolutely, gloriously, manically hilarious.
It even manages to find some time at the end of the film to play merry with an epilogue of sorts, firmly stamping the film at a brilliantly realised slice of silliness that pokes fun at all kinds of things including how white people almost trip over themselves in their rush to not seem racist.
Somehow in the middle of all this mid-fi comedy – perhaps the only failing of Quiz Lady is that it doesn’t completely push the pedal to the metal save for a scene where Jenny, trying to calm Annie’s nerves at the audition, gives her some drugs which send her off to a lalaland full of cute talking clouds and technicolour landscapes; watching highly wound Annie get trippily loosey-goosey is worth the price of admission alone – the film also manages to be earnest and heartfelt without once tipping over into mawkish sentimentality.
It’s quite an art being both a riotously funny romp through the weirdness of American life and a moving bringing together of two estranged and traumatised sisters who discover they are actually closer to each other than either believe, but Quiz Lady manages it with touching aplomb, mixing up the silly with the serious to crowd-pleasing but emotionally authentic effect.
Keeping the two in tension is tricky but at no point does Quiz Lady fall off the high wire, with the movie managing to get its freak on without losing the groundedness that makes it more than just a series of quirky characters and beautifully-formed sharply comedic dialogue competing for a perfect punchline.
Sure you laugh, and laugh a lot, but you also feel how disconnected Annie and Jenny and why it is that Annie needs to cling to a TV show so tightly; it’s the only thing that stands between her and a sense that life is wildly out of control, and while the grey cardigans and buttoned-down earnestness might suggest someone who has no idea what this is like, Annie is all too painfully aware of what happens when the wheels fall off life, and in a spectacularly awful way.
Quiz Lady might have a happy ending and a playful sense of wrapping things up with a feverishly wacky rainbow-coloured bow but it’s more than the sum of its predictable storyline parts, serving up characters with depth and who matter, scenarios that are funny but which also capture your heart and a sublimely good mix of the weird and the heartfelt that always stay in tension, cuts right to the heart of things and which, in amongst the copious number of laughs, actually makes you feel something way after the bowtie-studded credits have run.