‘Party’ pooper: Melissa McCarthy manages not to be funny
It’s possible that no one will believe this, but about an hour into “Life of the Party,” I figured out that Melissa McCarthy and her husband, Ben Falcone, wrote the screenplay and that Falcone directed it. I did this without prior knowledge or checking, not through some great flash of critical insight, but because of a family resemblance that anyone could recognize: “Life of the Party” is a little too much like “Tammy.”
“Tammy,” from 2014, was a sentimental picture that turned McCarthy into a laugh-clown-laugh figure — something all comedians secretly seem to crave, and the enemy and death of all things funny.