‘Book Club: The Next Chapter’ Has No Business Being As Entertaining As It Is

The pandemic ends, they reunite even though being in the same room together “still feels illegal,” and then they’re off to Italy. “I’m retired, my cat is dead. We’re talking about going to the top wine-producing country in the world,” says Sharon. There, they’re almost immediately catcalled. Though initially Diane thinks they’ve been called old, upon further translation they come to find that what they’ve been told in Italian is: “The older the vine, the sweeter the fruit.” Viv calls out, “Yeah, we still got it!” Diane agrees: “Yeah, we got it!”

The moment exposes the cap on the movie’s liberated spirit. As refreshing as it may be to watch three women in their 70s and one (Fonda) in her 80s talk about their sexuality and openly seek pleasure, the characters in Book Club are nothing if not beholden to the attention of men. As such, the movie barely passes the Bechdel Test (does talking about wedding dresses count as not talking about a man?) and notions of progressivism tend to be undermined. Risks are flirted with and then swerved. Carol reunites with an old flame, Gianni (Vincent Riotta), a chef whose meatballs’ size is a repeated double entendre. Her friends encourage her to have the affair that she seems drawn to, but it’s all ultimately an excuse for innuendo. Serving the women (and a guy that Sharon picks up and bangs in a boat) in his restaurant, Gianni announces, “I’m here to start the amuse bouche,” to which Viv quips, “I think somebody’s bouche is already amused!” When Carol and Gianni are finally alone together, she tells him, “We better take advantage of tonight.” Cut to a rocking van outside Gianni’s home. Then cut to Mary and Gianni kneading dough inside.

The movie works because its punchlines work and because its characters are tart. It’s all one big exaggeration for the sake of as many laughs as possible. Even Diane, the Rose of the group, gets in a barb or two; she jokes about the team behind Viv’s face (Fonda has been transparent about her plastic surgery). The movie makes it easy, seductive even, to turn off your brain and politics. Of course when these four white women break down in the Italian countryside, they gasp in delight when a cop rolls up. (This leads to Viv attempting to undress him because she figures he’s a stripper, as she’s about to get married.) Of course when they roast each other in jail (they’re arrested for admitting to the hot cop that they were trying to hitchhike), no one has a bad word to say about the sharpest tongue in the bunch and obvious alpha Sharon, the de facto Dorothy Zbornak. (Carol: “I think you are doing just fine.” Diane: “Yeah! I mean, I’ve got nothing.”) Of course even when the institution of marriage is questioned as the proper choice for a character, the concept of monogamy remains honored.

Charm goes a long way, as these four principal actors well know. The Next Chapter’s centerpiece is a karaoke sequence in which Gianni sings the original Italian version of “Gloria” (subsequently made famous in the U.S. by Laura Branigan). In the middle of the number, Steenburgen walks into frame convincingly handling an accordion. Turns out, it’s not a deft pantomime—she actually plays. In 2013, she told CBS News that she picked up music at age 60 after undergoing surgery, a spontaneous skill that may have had something to do with the anesthesia. (???) “I had a minor surgery on my arm, but it was enough that I went under general anesthetic, and the music started right after that,” she said. In the words of Brendan Fraiser’s character in The Whale, people are amazing. Book Club: The Next Chapter makes a really good case for it.