Mack and Rita (2022)

Mack and Rita review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Mack and Rita are a movie that feels like Big and Freaky Friday were shoved into a blender and set to frappe. What comes out is a generational divide comedy with an okay premise, but hardly ever finds more beyond its central allure of Diane Keaton running around with the brain of a millennial. There’s some fun stuff with that premise, but little more than smiles in a picture all about finding contentment with age.

Mack (Elizabeth Lail) is established as a woman in her thirties struggling to find herself. Having gravitated much more towards her grandmother at an early age, she’s finding it challenging to maintain her career and not be jealous of her friends getting married. Bitter during a wedding, she dashes off to a New Age healer’s place, where he lets her take a spin in one of his gizmos that’ll help her achieve inner peace. Something goes wrong amid her ranting, and she wakes up the following day as the older version of herself, now played by Keaton.

Trying to cover for the absence of her younger form, Mack adopts the name Rita and poses as a relation of Mack. She uses this new form to explore an entirely new lifestyle. She connects with older women and learns all about the level of comfort that comes from growing older and yearning for the younger days. She tries to be a different influencer by taking on new gigs for older women. And, perhaps the strangest development, she forms a romance with a younger man, hoping she’ll able to pick up this romance when she is younger again. As if the character's aging wasn’t fantastical enough, this age-divided romance manages to survive beyond the magic of Mack becoming Rita.

The best parts of the picture are mostly watching Keaton have a ball with this role. She screams, runs around, falls in pools, and makes highly exaggerated expressions. She gets frustrated with her body, turning disastrous for an exercise class where she argues against having to endure such physical stress. There are some charming conversations Rita has with her new collection of elderly women, even if it mostly meanders around. It’d be a much more engaging movie if it were just Rita hanging around her friends, talking about growing old, having sex, and slurping wine.

What makes this comedy less enduring are its many choices in humor. You know a film is in trouble where to have some fun with the concept, something has to be lit on fire. Sure enough, Rita’s hair catching on fire at a public event arrives right on cue for the host to declare that she’s on fire in more ways than one. The romance is cute but so unbelievably saccharine that Dustin Milligan feels more like a cartoonish robot of every woman’s desires than a character with a personality beyond the chipper “I love whatever you love” perspective.

Mack and Rita is a movie that is likely going to play towards older women, and it serves its purpose well as passive entertainment. If you enjoy watching Diane Keaton panic, perform, and have fun while drinking wine with older women, this film delivers on that promise. If you were seeking the film’s grander message about the generational divide, there isn’t much to make this picture worth recommending. I’ll bet it’s more of a hoot to watch while drunk on wine.