Where I Watched it: Hulu

English Audio Description?: No

As a fan of Grace and Frankie, I had been looking forward to this even if it wasn’t getting much attention. I couldn’t find a VOD version of this with audio description, so i waited for it to appear on Hulu. It also doesn’t have audio description on Hulu. Perhaps a track was never created.

It isn’t a terribly difficult movie to follow. One woman (Jane Fonda) attends the funeral of an old friend, and immediately plots to kill her husband (Malcolm MacDowell), who raped her many years before. It dramatically altered her life, but she buried it out of devotion to her friend. Along for the ride is the third in this friend trio (Lily Tomlin), a lesbian former lover who has been treated with contempt by the husband of the woman she once loved.

Obviously, not a happy film, but it does find a dark humor in the little moments. There’s quite a bit of effort that goes into getting a gun to pull off the murder,and Tomlin and Fonda always have excellent chemistry. There’s a similar resemblance to their Netflix counterparts, but Tomlin certainly isn’t playing a fool here. Her eccentricities are earned through life experience, not through reading obscure texts and believing in absurd old wives tales. Both women miss their friend, but also realize she was married to a monster for so many years. At this late stage in life, Fonda couldn’t care less if she’s apprehended for his murder. She just needs it over and done with.

Interestingly, from the guy who brought you American Pie, comes a far more mature piece on unfinished business that will please longtime fans of Fonda and Tomlin, and the Over 65 crowd. It could use audio description, but the devil in the details here has far more to do with the dialogue than any set, scenery, costumes, or visual cues. Like the show, this movie is about the banter between these two women, and whether or not MacDowell will get what is coming to him.

Final Grade: B-