IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Released: 3rd November
Seen: 7th November
You know what we really don’t have enough of lately? Simple original comedy films. Not something based on an IP or a remake of an old film but just a quirky little comedy that allows a couple of celebs to show off their comedic chops for 90 minutes. It’s kind of surprising because there used to be a time where every other week seemed to have some wild new original comedy that would give people a good break from the world and now the closest we get are genre mashups with a few punchlines. That’s why it felt like such a breath of fresh air to see something like Quiz Lady being released, a simple comedy with a couple of good stars and a fun/simple premise that seems like it should be rife with comedic potential… and it is, it’s nice when this opening paragraph doesn’t need to have a sudden sharp turn at the end for dramatic purposes, this is just nice.
Quiz Lady brings us into the world of Anne Yum (Awkwafina), a quiet woman who hates her job and her neighbour and whose only time of genuine peace is when she’s watching her favourite quiz show on TV, a show she knows well and often plays along with at home where she gets every question right. When her mother goes missing from her retirement home (a plotline that means nothing in the long run) it reunites Anne with her eccentric sister Jenny Yum (Sandra Oh) who ends up recording a little bit of Anne playing the Quiz Game at home. When the video goes viral it not only turns Anne into an overnight celebrity but it results in a gang stealing her dog to blackmail her for money that her mom owes them. Since she clearly needs to get her dog back, Anne’s only viable option is to go on the very game show she’s spent years watching and win the money.
Quiz Lady follows a lot of fairly standard plot points one might expect in a buddy comedy, from an extended road trip scene to a wacky hotel manager that makes things uncomfortable to an awkward first attempt at completing their main objective, all the way to the inevitable argument and then reconnection that coincides with a moment of potential humiliation for the lead. It’s all very standard, you worked out the full plot of this the second you saw that it was about two people going to compete on a quiz show and good on you for knowing basic plot structure. Of course, with a film like this the plot isn’t what matters too much, they follow the standard structure because it generally works well enough that all you need to do is get some good performances and throw in a few great jokes here and there to make it work.
Quiz Lady has a bunch of great performances from an incredible cast, the notable standout being Sandra Oh who basically barrels into the film as a living cartoon character and manages to maintain that energy throughout. She knows just how to go over the top and when to pull back for some more emotional moments, it’s a masterful performance that helps keep the scenes she shares with Awkwafina going. Not to say Awkwafina isn’t doing a great job, she objectively is the heart of the film who makes you root for her from start to finish but she also has the hard job of basically being the voice of reason throughout the film which means that sometimes she has to be more serious and Sandra picks up the comedic baton and runs with it for a lot of the time.
That comedic baton gets one hell of a workout because sure enough, Quiz Lady is really damn funny. A lot of the humour is absurd, an entire sequence at a hotel themed around Ben Franklin is so gloriously stupid and weird that you can’t help but cackle at it, but all of it works. It’s not trying to fire out a joke every few seconds, there’s a lot of character building to make sure that the jokes work as well as they can. It blends heart and humor well enough to be enjoyable, which makes sense considering the writer also handled Hocus Pocus 2 and Totally Killer, which were also pretty enjoyable comedies that did a lot of interesting character work. Maybe not world changing, but good enough to get a few laughs.
It also helps that Quiz Lady is a very well directed film, everyone clearly felt free to let loose and create something fun and there are even a few pretty great visual gags that gave a new spin to a well used trope (We’ve all seen the scene of someone who has to do something important just as some drugs are kicking in but this film finds a pretty fun way to do the visuals that I haven’t seen before). You can just feel that this cast trusted their director who managed to give the film a good quick energy. Even though it’s a familiar scenario there are still enough fun original twists to the tale to make it pretty damn good.
Quiz Lady is pretty damn fun for what it is, a simple comedy with a couple of fantastic leads who elevate the material and provide some charming performances. Sure a lot of it is predictable and it follows a structure that’s so standard you can pretty much call the final joke for every single character the moment you meet them, but that doesn’t take away from its enjoyability. It’s actually a good film that probably deserved a lot more marketing than it ended up getting (because I’m confident you didn’t know this even came out, did you? It’s on Disney Plus, has been for a few days, nothing in terms of a big push by the studio… idiots, all studio heads are idiots).
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