TOMFOOLERY

In theaters this weekend:

80 for Brady--It's a testament to the star power of the four leading ladies in this movie that I didn't resent that their characters were Tom Brady fans. Not that much, anyway. I didn't even resent that the film amounts to a feature-length commercial for the NFL; it's being released the weekend before Super Bowl Sunday, almost as if the league is trying to offer its own counterprogramming.

Who cares? At this point in their careers, Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno could pretty much read grocery lists and it would carry a certain pop-culture gravitas. The script, by Sarah Haskins and Emily Halpern and inspired by a real-life circle of elderly Boston-based fans of Tommy Boy and the Patriots, doesn't really offer them much more to work with than a grocery list would, and they still come off all right.

Tomlin, a cancer survivor, is the outspoken instigator who insists that she and her friends must go watch Brady play in the 2017 Big Game. Fonda is a flirt given to romantically leaping before she looks; she's also successful writer of erotic fiction about Rob Gronkowski. Field is an academic weary of her dependent, literally absent-minded professor husband (Bob Balaban) and Moreno yearns to break free of assisted living despite a fellow resident (Glynn Turman) who likes her.

The quartet ends up in Houston having wacky adventures at the Super Bowl Experience and at parties and poker games and chicken wing eating contests and such. All does not, it need hardly be said, go smoothly. They're befriended by the choreographer of the half-time show (Billy Porter) and if you think they don't end up dancing to get past security, think again.

With her blunt, urgent delivery, Tomlin somehow emerges as the team captain of the ensemble. But all four are infectiously energetic and seem to enjoy goofing around with the supporting players shoved in their paths, like Porter, or Harry Hamlin as a love interest for Fonda, or Sara Gilbert as Tomlin's daughter, or Andy Richter as a high roller in a skybox, or Alex Moffat and Rob Corrddry as a dyspeptic sports-talk team, and of course Brady and Gronk and Guy Fieri and others as themselves. Even the bit players include the likes of Patton Oswalt and Sally Kirkland.

80 for Brady starts slow, but it should be said that as it progresses, and gets broader and sillier, it also gets better; both livelier and more heartfelt. By the end these women had me absurdly emotionally invested. This is, possibly, the lamest and most ridiculous film that has ever brought tears to my eyes.

HORSE/SHOW

Again, Happy (Chinese) New Year! My pal, the brilliant artist Vince Larue, made these gorgeous horses for The Kid, who was born in the previous Year of the Horse:

Check out my list, on Topless Robot, of 12 Nerdy Alternatives to the Super Bowl.

However you spend it, I hope everybody enjoys UberBowl Sunday. If, like me, you’re mostly indifferent to football, you’ll enjoy the quiet streets, sparsely populated movie theaters and short waits at restaurants. If you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy the festivity of the day, the excitement of the game and the spectacle of the show.

You may also be one of those who enjoy the Super Bowl commercials, those little exercises in corporate ego that often showcase dazzling skill in compressed cinematic narrative. Last year, one of the more popular ads was the “Team” commercial for the Hyundai Santa Fe, in which a put-upon little kid assembles a football team of other wimpy-looking kids engaged in various macho activities—wrestling bears, etc.

One kid is welding some big, round, suspended metal structure covered with what look like square shutters, making it for all the world resemble the sphere that heroes take to the Moon in The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.

Can that possibly be what was intended—that he's planning a trip to the Moon?

COOKIE MONSIEUR

Friday I had lunch with Vince Larue, the splendid young illustrator who created the cover art for my zombie novel…

Vince was in town for the scheduled opening, that evening, of a show at Willo North Gallery in which his work was to be featured, but which was—for reasons unrelated to him—ignominiously cancelled after he had already made the trip from France to attend the opening (happily, the show is to open in March instead, at a venue TBA).

Anyway, for lunch we went to Beijing Garden, the newish, excellent Chinese place at COFCO Center. I had the eggplant in brown sauce—sublime—and Vince had the spicy tofu, which I sampled and which was also delicious, though a bit spicier than I prefer. When we finished, we were brought our fortune cookies.

Now, at a friend’s recommendation last year I read a charming book, which I highly recommend, called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, by a New York Times reporter named Jennifer 8 Lee (yes, her middle name is “8”). It’s about the considerable significance of Chinese food in general, and the fortune cookie in particular, in American culture.

Apparently the fortune cookie is not so familiar in Normandy. I cracked mine open, read my fortune (“Have a vision. Be demanding.”) and was crunching up the halves when I heard Vince giggling from across the table. I looked up.

“I ate the message,” he said sheepishly, spitting out a tiny wad of pulverized paper.

So his fortune remains a mystery. But if I had to take a guess, it would be that a bright future is betokened for this guy.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everybody. To the very tiny degree that I care, I guess I‘m rooting for Baltimore, as I’ve had a lot of fun in that city, and I love that they named their football team in honor of Poe, who died there.