Melissa McCarthy Goes Back to School in First ‘Life of the Party’ Trailer
Ya girl Melissa McCarthy is at it again — and by “it” we mean making another comedy with her husband / director Ben Falcone. This time out, McCarthy is paying homage to the Rodney Dangerfield classic Back to School by (wait for it) going back to school. College, to be specific. As you can imagine, the first trailer for Life of the Party is packed with wacky shenanigans.
McCarthy debuted the trailer this morning on The Ellen Show, where Ellen Degeneres’ audience ate it up. Despite the basic setup, the movie doesn’t seem to have much in common with Dangerfield’s ’80s comedy: McCarthy plays a woman whose husband abruptly leaves her, so she does what a totally reasonable mother would do and follows her daughter to college. The trailer follows McCarthy’s usual quirky fish-out-of-water formula and features some of her patented physical gags, but remove the laughter from the live studio audience and it doesn’t look all that funny.
That’s not exactly surprising; McCarthy’s previous films with Falcone have been fairly disappointing, and while they’re not downright atrocious or unwatchable, they just feel underwhelming. McCarthy deserves so much better than these mediocre movies. Hopefully Life of the Party surprises us when it hits theaters on May 11.