2.5 stars (out of 4)
Who’s in the mood for a middling war-zone version of Eat, Pray, Love?
Minus the eating. And the praying. And the love.
No matter. This drama still depicts another bright-yet-unhappy middle-aged woman’s bumpy journey to self-discovery. Like Elizabeth Gilbert, real-life writer Kim Barker is naturally empathetic, flaws and all. But her story is stuck in a movie grappling with its own identity crisis.
Tina Fey takes on the heroine character in her most impressive and challenging role to date. The misleading trailers would have you believe that she’s playing a wacky woman who travels overseas on a whim after finding out her boyfriend is a cheater. The reality is slightly less cliché: A successful 42-year-old New York City TV news writer, Kim drudges through life with ennui. In 2004, with the Iraq War raging, she takes on an assignment to report overseas in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her “mildly depressive” man (Josh Charles) is still in the picture when she leaves for what’s supposed to be a three-month gig.
At first, Kim, closed-off by nature, is ill at ease in her new surroundings. She’s bunking with a bunch of fellow journalists, and within the first day, a Lara Logan–type bombshell (Margot Robbie) asks if it’s cool if she sleeps with her hot Aussie bodyguard. Kim also lugs around a bright orange backpack, much to the chagrin of a Marine general (Billy Bob Thornton) and his camouflaged troops. And don’t even go there with the polluted, feces-filled air.
Granted, a quippy fish-out-of-water story isn’t the ideal way to frame a film when life and death are at stake. And Fey innately comes off as too intelligent to play the whiny, hapless princess. Yet it’s jarring how quickly Kim acclimates herself. The very first time she treks on a ride-along with the Marines, she witnesses an enemy gunfire attack. Instead of staying in the Humvee as instructed, she runs out to film the action without batting a mascaraed eyelash.
From there, the film can’t decide where to go or what to do with her or even what it is. In tonally schizophrenic episodes, Kim starts to fall for a rakish Scottish photographer (romance!), struggles with understanding the language (comedy!) and turns into a respected front-line TV war correspondent (you-go-girl inspiration!).
Or maybe this is supposed to be a meditation on the treatment of females in the Middle East. In one scene, Kim must wear a head-to-toe burqa to do investigative reporting and … oh, never mind, the endeavor is fruitless. Even the journalism-in-the-trenches bonding unravels, as besties Fey and Robbie turn into hostile rivals — a ludicrous and borderline offensive development. Must two high-powered women always compete with each other?
With the appealing Fey in the lead, though, we’re inclined to invest in her adventures in the desert. Surely there’s a Kim Barker inside most career women of a certain age — i.e., a secret curiosity about exploring a wanderlust, office-free lifestyle.
If only screenwriter Robert Carlock (30 Rock) knew this line of thinking is more of an ellipsis than a series of exclamation points. Clearly Kim has succeeded in shaking things up and is headed in an exciting new life direction. No need for her to blackmail the lecherous Afghan attorney general and convince the troops to stage a dangerous kidnapping rescue attempt! And after all that drama, she still demands closure upon closure.
WTF, indeed.
