Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Yara Shahidi, Odessa A’zion, Bette Midler, Ron Livingston, Martha Kelly
Intro:
… hits every expected tearjerker moment, never missing an opportunity for a good cliché, right down to the sappy Christmas lovefest, but there’s something refreshing in seeing a film that embraces sweet oversentimentality.
Best friends since childhood, Jane (Yara Shahidi) and Corrine (Odessa A’zion) are joined at the hip and yet couldn’t be more different. Corrine is confident and charismatic, the life of every party, while Jane is studious and more than a little timid. After watching Jane win over a bar full of strangers with her homemade cake, Corrine comes up with the perfect plan to get Jane out of her shell and hopefully engineer a convenient meet-cute while she’s at it.
The objective: 1 year, 50 cakes in 50 bars across the city, each chosen for their optimal level of date-worthy patrons. The name: cakebarring.
What starts out as a typical set up for a romcom takes a swift turn when Corrine receives life-altering news, and what was supposed to be a fun gimmick to transform Jane from socially awkward to social butterfly becomes a last-ditch effort for normalcy in a world turned upside down.
Based on the biography/recipe book by Audrey Shulman, the film moves past romcom convention and instead brings female friendship to the forefront. The chemistry between Shahidi and A’zion flows naturally, sparkling and heart-wrenching in turn, creating a solid core of truth to the amplified emotion that dominates the story.
The screenplay hits every expected tearjerker moment, never missing an opportunity for a good cliché, right down to the sappy Christmas lovefest, but there’s something refreshing in seeing a film that embraces sweet oversentimentality. It’s also acted beautifully every step of the way by a delightful cast. Ron Livingston and Martha Kelly are standouts as Corrine’s eccentric parents, well-meaning and faultlessly tender-hearted, even if they’d be impossible to live with for more than 24 hours. And just in case the Beaches parallels weren’t already entirely obvious, we have Bette Midler giving her best Miranda Priestly as Corrine’s boss.
Ultimately, Sitting in Bars with Cake is a love story between friends, family, and those who blur the line between them, and a reminder that even when things are going wrong, cake is always the right answer.
