Here is the ideal way to see the new movie 80 for Brady (in theaters February 3). You should still be wobbly from some kind of sinus something acquired more than a week prior, long ago enough that you have begun to wonder if this condition is maybe something far more sinister. Be approaching a scary milestone birthday, one looming close enough that pretty much any mundane thought can be quickly connected to mortal dread. Be alone in a theater midday, both made cozy and the teensiest bit threatened by all the empty dark surrounding you (much like death might be?). Feel raw about any number of things, from work stress to personal woes and insecurities to the state of a world teetering on the brink of becoming unrecognizable from what you once knew, back when you were young and bright.
Creating those exact conditions might be a tall order, but the point is, Kyle Marvin’s near-surrealist film—in which a group of elderly women travel to the 2017 Super Bowl to see their idol, Tom Brady, lead the New England Patriots to victory—is best watched with frayed nerves and an open heart. Be vulnerable to what the film is offering, and you might just—hypothetically! I’m not saying this definitely happened to someone this week!—cry four times throughout.
Not that this is a heavy affair. 80 for Brady is mostly a weird lark, following four friends as they go on a wacky adventure to Houston and find new mettle in their twilight years. Lily Tomlin is Lou, the “quarterback” of the quartet and the most die-hard Pats fan among them. She and her pals became invested in the Patriots back when Lou was undergoing cancer treatment, a harrowing time that still haunts her. (Okay, maybe the movie is a little heavy.) Rita Moreno is Maura, who lives in a retirement community that her late husband loved, even though she would be just fine living independently in the house she still owns. Jane Fonda is Trish, a serial dater whose men always let her down; she’s also the author of niche-popular erotica novels (“fan fiction,” she calls it) about Patriots player Rob Gronkowski. Betty, played by Sally Field, is a rigid retired mathematics professor whose husband, played by Bob Balaban, relies on her too much, at the expense of her own autonomy.
These characters are at times vaguely defined and, at others, sharply rendered. Which is far better than if they were simple stock caricatures: the serious one, the floozy, the firecracker, etc. Each actor is able to add her own idiosyncratic shading to this episodic film, a series of rambling set pieces that are consistently amusing if not always ha-ha funny. 80 for Brady is a loosely structured hang movie, albeit one that culminates in a curiously affecting emotional climax. The great hang movies of, say, Richard Linklater sure don’t end like 80 for Brady does. Linklater films also don’t feature Guy Fieri.
Yes, he’s in the movie, popping up to emcee when Betty enters a hot wing eating contest. Later, Betty talks to the amiable Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives host through the door of a porta-potty. Maura, zonked out on edibles, stumbles into a high-stakes poker game, at first hallucinating that everyone at the table is Mr. Fieri, his head freakishly grafted onto different bodies. (They are actually, among others, Patton Oswalt, Retta, and Billy Porter.) Not all of the movie’s strange moments involve the honorable mayor of Flavortown. In one brief scene, Betty learns the definition of “negging” after watching hotdogging Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy say something mean about brilliant internet comedian (and actor) Brian Jordan Alvarez’s legs. Porter, playing Lady Gaga’s halftime show choreographer, does a dance with the girls while a security guard watches on in intense admiration. Lou frequently has visions of Tom Brady speaking to her through Bobbleheads and video screens.
Through all that loopy, arbitrary silliness, something sincere takes hold. We have come to expect the wistful notes of this particular genre: the necessary nods toward the finality of all things, to time either lost or happily used up. Field is spunky as ever—her relative youth means she’s a bit more in touch with contemporary rhythms and vernacular. But it is hard not to watch Moreno—such a lively comedian, still sparking away as ever—and think about her 91 years and how many more might be left. Fonda, bewigged and bedazzled, is still having fun in her late-in-life career resurgence, but a slowness has descended. Ditto Tomlin, saddled with by far the most morose character. There’s an inescapable sorrow to the film, as much as it wants to be—and is!—light and celebratory.
Or maybe that’s just me. It is probably unfair to project my own mortal fears on a movie that, while cognizant of the creep of death, is simply trying to enjoy itself. I should probably meet the movie on its own terms. Which, I suppose, is easy enough, when there is its oddball energy to vibe on, its Dada riffs to ride all the way to a pleasingly sappy conclusion. Despite the Patriots being something of an evil empire in an otherwise troublesome sport, despite Brady maybe not being the best choice for hero worship, 80 for Brady sells the valorization. Not of Brady and the Patriots, exactly, but of anything grand and faraway that might give inspiration, shape, or meaning to the plod and ache and worry of existence. I’m glad these women—who are roughly based on real people—got to have this defining adventure, because why should anyone decent be denied such excitement? And I’m glad there’s 80 for Brady, a movie wise enough to be dumb, and blissfully heedless enough to suggest a party without end.
