If Tina Fey and Amy Poehler didn’t have such an awesome track record in groundbreaking comedy, their averagely funny and just-good-enough ‘Sisters’ wouldn’t be such a let-down. I found myself smiling like a maniac every time one of them appeared on screen, only to wait for gags that drag their heels. It’s a comedy about two sisters. Fey is chaotic, irresponsible Kate, who barely holds down a job as a hairdresser. Poehler is Maura, the serious one. When their parents sell the family home in Florida, the sisters are summoned back to Orlando to clear out their bedrooms. Instead, they throw the mother of all parties.
Maybe the missing ingredient is a Fey-Poehler dream-team script. Writing duties instead fall to their ‘Saturday Night Live’ teammate Paula Pell, who nails the regression we all slip into the instant we set foot inside in our childhood homes: raiding the fridge and throwing teenage tantrums. But these characters are nowhere near as sharp as the ones Fey and Poehler played on TV in ‘30 Rock’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’. There’s comedy-gold support from Maya Rudolph as the bitchy girl in class who has grown up to become a property mogul. But ‘Sisters’ is too strained for a comedy starring two of the funniest people alive.