Certificate: 12A
Running Time: 108 mins
UK Distributor: Universal
WHO’S IN BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER?
Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, Andy García, Don Johnson, Craig T. Nelson, Giancarlo Giannini, Hugh Quarshie, Vincent Riotta
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Bill Holderman (director, writer, producer), Erin Simms (writer, producer), Tom Howe (composer), Andrew Dunn (cinematographer), Doc Crotzer (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Four friends (Keaton, Fonda, Bergen and Steenburgen) head to Italy for a girls trip…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER?
Reviewing a movie like Book Club: The Next Chapter is a futile venture, because no matter what I have to say about it, you probably already know what kind of movie you’re going to get from just a couple of frames from the trailer. The film, which serves as a sequel to the 2018 box office hit Book Club, is pretty much what it’s being advertised as, that being a light-hearted and treacly romp set in a luscious European country with some well-regarded and award-winning American actors delivering enough eye-rolling sitcom jokes to fill an entire episode of Full House.
It is also, much like its predecessor, extremely condescending to its central demographic of middle-aged women, and not much of a thrilling adventure for anyone else.
The film begins as best friends Diane (Keaton), Vivian (Fonda), Sharon (Bergen) and Carol (Steenburgen) reunite for their regular in-person book club after the pandemic forces them onto Zoom (which, as often seems to be the case in movies like this, always has the crispest and clearest camera quality, as though these women who apparently don’t know much about modern technology have the single greatest webcams in existence).
Vivian surprises them all by announcing that she’s getting married to her partner Arthur (Don Johnson), and the friends decide to use this opportunity to go on the trip to Italy that they never got to do, for Vivian’s bachelorette party. Before you know it, they’ve landed in Rome and are taking in all the touristic sites, before heading to Venice for a little while and finally Tuscany, with all sorts of silliness happening to them along the way.
Admittedly, it’s been since it first came out that I saw the first Book Club movie, so I don’t remember a whole lot about it, except that the tone and humour was pretty much on par with this sequel, albeit perhaps a bit more risqué than it is here (Fifty Shades of Grey was a major plot-point in that movie, after all). Book Club: The Next Chapter is a lot more streamlined, and noticeably stripped back to its barest sitcom essentials, which means that a lot of the humour feels way more forced and contrived, not to mention incredibly predictable with nearly every joke being telegraphed for the absent studio audience to chuckle away at.
It would be one thing if the movie was actually funny, and God bless these four acting legends for trying to squeeze a laugh out of their lines, but it really is the kind of comedy that you’d often find in a particularly lame sitcom, from sexual innuendoes galore to some rather implausible scenarios that stretch credibility even in a silly premise such as this. It’s like if they rebooted The Golden Girls but then hired Chuck Lorre to be its showrunner, with the results being just as awkward and cringe-inducing as you may think.
Quality of the humour aside, though, the most surprising thing about Book Club: The Next Chapter is how boring and even sluggish it gets. The film doesn’t even have that long a running time, at one hour and forty-eight minutes, but the way in which some scenes are needlessly stretched out (and you can tell exactly which ones too), it feels longer than some of the recent rom-coms that are objectively of slightly worse quality than this film. Since there’s very little humour that’s strong enough to carry it, nor are there any real stakes in this plot until much later into the movie, you find yourself with very little reason to care about these characters or their perfectly picturesque holiday where almost nothing goes truly wrong for them, and even when it does it’s resolved reasonably quickly.
The only thing that’s really holding your attention is the number of admittedly beautiful Italian landscapes, with the film taking as much advantage as it can of showing off cities like Rome and Venice like it’s a glossy tourism advert, enough to where it might subconsciously inspire you to visit these gorgeous locations in your spare time – and, of course, when you apparently earn enough disposable income as these four lead women do. Speaking of, the main four actors certainly look like they’re enjoying themselves on-camera, revelling in the fact that they’re spending a nice trip together in a lovely part of the world, while supporting players like Don Johnson and Andy García (the latter as Keaton’s love interest from the previous film, who like Johnson gets precious little to do other than bask in the Italian sunshine).
Since these are a group of great actors having fun in these stunning locations, I can’t say that Book Club: The Next Chapter is truly terrible. It may fail in a lot of departments, including its overly condescending sitcom humour and its near-total lack of reasons to actually care (among other things which I wasn’t able to find room in this review to talk about), but seeing the likes of Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda – who features in another recent middle-age baiting comedy 80 for Brady, which is more enjoyable to sit through than this – seem to genuinely enjoy their time on screen together isn’t something I want to take away from.
It’s rubbish, but it’s a slightly endearing kind of rubbish.
SO, TO SUM UP…
Book Club: The Next Chapter is a lame and condescending sequel that gets by on cheesy sitcom humour and few reasons to actually care, but the gorgeous Italian scenery and the fun that its lead actors seem to genuinely be having makes it hard to completely dismiss.
Book Club: The Next Chapter is now showing in cinemas nationwide
