Family ties of Fey, Poehler tested by ‘Sisters’

“When I was wrong ( as with Tina) I’ve said sorry to them”. The Fey-Poehler team, with their extensive, overlapping experience on Saturday Night Live, know each other’s comedy beats so intimately that they can actually convince you they are on-screen sisters.

There is that one scene, though, in which Barinholtz gets a music box playing “Fur Elise” stuck in a most embarrassing place, a bit so filthy and so amusing that even Beethoven would have to laugh. When they reread their childhood scrawl, Kate’s is a lurid account of sex and debauchery. Sisters is the first feature she wrote herself, but she was a writer on SNL for almost 20 years, starting her tenure in 1995.

Rachel Dratch is Kelly, who’s depressed because time is marching on and she feels old. She contributed jokes to Bridesmaids.

While on the show, the 45-year-old Sisters star also chatted about her two daughters, Alice, 10, and Penelope, 4.

“Sisters” just doesn’t cohere as a consistent piece. Both Fey and Poehler are involved in the production. “That’s 100% still my challenge in life”.

So it’s with no small reluctance I report “Sisters” is a depressing, overlong, repetitive slapstick disaster in which two of the most appealing stars around wallow in the muck AND the mire, figuratively and literally. “I’m the bad girl!” But instead of saying goodbye to their past, they opt to re-live it in the form of a huge party with their former high school friends, only with a personality exchange: Maura will get to be the wild thing, and Kate will have to stay sober and responsible. “There’s always the person that’s drunk that goes down a dark road”, she says. And during herrecent interview with People to promote her upcoming movie, Sisters, Fey got hilariously self-aware.

Yes, they finish each other’s sentences. Even though they look nothing like sisters, they’re believable as sisters.

“We have a hashtag, that’s part of our social media campaign, and its #YouCanSeeThemBoth”, says Fey, who was born and raised in Upper Darby, Delaware County. Pell has been surrounded by fabulously talented women since starting at SNL in the mid-’90s. “When she is mad at you, she will just take you apart”. “Just put them in your hand”. Pell is pleased to see the comedy world become more diverse.

MORE: Find more movie reviews of films now in local theaters or coming to theaters this weekend. Referencing the last movie that the two actress made together – Baby Mama – I asked if there was a conscious choice made to swap their personalities.