Review: 'Barb & Star' is a wacky comedy centered around two fierce, funny females

The power of friendship is at the heart of “Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” a wickedly funny if sometimes scattershot comedy by real-life friends Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo.

Mumolo plays Barb and Wiig plays Star, middle-aged best pals, co-workers and roommates in their small Nebraska town. They spend practically every waking moment together, but they don’t mind because their favorite things include telling the other the smallest details of their lives.

One day, though, they lose their furniture-store jobs, and that same night are booted from their “talking club” by the officious Debbie (Vanessa Bayer). They need something to shake up their lives, so they follow a friend’s advice and book a trip to Vista Del Mar, a sun-dappled resort on Florida’s Gulf Coast. What could go wrong?

Well, unbeknownst to Barb and Star, an evil villain — also played by Wiig, in eggshell-white face makeup and a severe brunette wig — has hatched a dastardly plot to let loose a swarm of killer mosquitos onto Vista Del Mar. To carry out the details, the villain sends the assassin henchman she’s been stringing along for years, Edgar (Jamie Dornan), to carry out the details of the plot. But Edgar hasn’t calculated the devastating effect of meeting two Midwestern women with a penchant for culottes.

Watching “Barb & Star” feels as if Wiig and Mumolo, who co-wrote the 2011 classic “Bridesmaids,” have been talking to each other as these characters as a private joke for years, and someone decided to just film them doing the bit in a resort hotel. They seem so natural as comedy partners, each trusting the other to take the scenes in odd directions.

Director Josh Greenbaum — a TV and documentary veteran, making his first feature film — helps Wiig and Mumolo throw every wacky idea onto the screen, just to see what sticks. Some of the gags, like an opening bit with a kid (Reyn Doi) delivering newspapers and lip-synching Barbra Streisand, are offbeat enough to be funny. Other elements, like Damon Wayans’ not-too-bright spy character, fall flat.

But Greenbaum’s number one job is to not get in the way when Wiig and Mumolo get riffing as their off-the-wall characters. They so sweetly and hilariously inhabit these friendships that it seems they could make a series of their adventures. Where will Barb and Star go next? Zanzibar? Madagascar? Back to the U.S.S.R.? Wherever they go, we will follow them.

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‘Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar’

★★★

Available starting Friday, February 12, for streaming as a video-on-demand rental. Rated PG-13 for crude sexual content, drug use and some strong language. Running time: 107 minutes.