Danielle Solzman
The Layover is a hot mess from start to finish and so full of cliches but one can’t help from watching it.
Hornsby and Krall have written for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but this film doesn’t live up to even that sitcom’s standards. These women are among of the most poorly-written female characters that I’ve ever seen. You almost have to feel bad for Kate Upton after her being cast in The Other Woman. Poor Alexandra Daddrio. First she has to suffer through a not-funny remake of Baywatch and she’s the actress who took over when Lea Michele couldn’t do the film. Would this film have worked better with Kate and Lea instead? I hardly think so.
For our two leads, Kate (Daddrio) and Meg (Upton) anything that can go wrong does. The film starts off with Kate essentially being talked into switching from teaching to cutting hair while Meg sees a business deal fall short. The two of them live together so what else do they do but fly from Seattle to Fort Lauderdale on an impulse.
Meg does the whole Meg Ryan orgasm and then Kate can’t even get the name of the film correct. This is before Ryan (Barr) even enters the picture as the sucker in the middle seat. But wait! Hurricane Cindy forces the plane to divert from its route. Rather than land in Fort Lauderdale, the crew is stuck in St. Louis, a good 30 minutes away from the Gateway Arch. This is where both Kate and Meg take their flirting to the next level in hopes of landing Ryan, whose headed to a wedding and doesn’t seem happy about not making it.
Anuj (Penn) is the hotel receptionist in St. Louis and as attractive as Meg is, he’ll do anything to make her happy.
Kate and Meg suggest ideas of things to do with Ryan and the hot air balloon ride wins out. This results in Kate hyperventilating and Matt has to start singing to calm her down. Meg is unhappy with the lack of attention and soon injures the balloon operator.
Later at the hotel pool, Meg decides to be a show-off and dive off of a pool lounge chair against her best judgement. Even Kate warns her against it. Immediately upon impact, she gets injured.
Both Kate and Meg are hanging out in the hotel restaurant when Nancy (Shannon) joins them. She comes off as very disgruntled and says she’s kidding about all of her complaints but she’s nice enough to pick up their tab.
Not wanting to miss the wedding, Ryan decides to go ahead and make the drive to Fort Lauderdale with Craig (Jones) joining him. Kate and Meg ask if there is room for two more and they join them for the 17 hour trip. Cue the road trip montage complete with dancing in the car.
They stop at gas station or something, where Kate decides goes to an awful looking restroom. Ever the opportunist, Meg locks her in. Ryan decides to wait, much against Meg’s dismay. Kate, in her attempts to break free, ends up breaking the sink and finds herself standing in the toilet. She’s not happy about this as she forces her way through the window.
Craig does the driving, falls asleep at the wheel, and they end up in a hotel outside of Valdosta, Georgia. Kate and Ryan make out while Meg sits at a bar making small talk with Craig.
An hour into the film, Meg decides to give up on her attempts to get with Ryan and focus on rebuilding her friendship with Kate. A fight breaks out at the hotel when Kate reveals she slept with Ryan. It gets messy and the cops are called. Both were intimate with Ryan but not at the same time. Nobody knows his last name. Even the cop couldn’t believe that they made out with someone without knowing their name.
It turns out that Craig had became a Google Plus contact with Ryan and it is revealed that Ryan is attending his own wedding. Kate begs the police to let them go to the wedding so that they can stop the wedding from happening. Craig doesn’t want to go but the girls have made up after the hell they put each other through over the previous 40 minutes of film.
Once they reach the hotel, in typical movie fashion, they break up the wrong wedding. Once they find the correct one, Ryan starts to make a run for it. Before heading back to Seattle, Meg decides to go after Craig. At the airport, she tells Kate that its for the best that the two don’t live together anymore.
DIRECTOR: William H. Macy
SCREENWRITERS: David Hornsby and Lance Krall
CAST: Alexandra Daddario, Kate Upton, Matt Barr, Matt Jones, Molly Shannon, Kal Penn, and Rob Corddry
