Title: Sitting in Bars with Cake
Describe This Movie In One Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill Quote:
GRIM REAPER: You! Cake or death?
PERSON: Uh, death please … no, cake! Cake! Sorry.
GRIM REAPER: You said death first! Ha! Death first!
PERSON: Well, I meant cake!
GRIM REAPER: Oh, all right. You’re lucky I’m Church of England…
Brief Plot Synopsis: Burgeoning baking business blindsided by big B C.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 2 blood diamonds out of 5.
Tagline: “There’s no recipe for the perfect friendship.”
Better Tagline: “Real friends don’t believe in E. coli.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Jane (Yara Shahidi) and Corinne (Odessa A’zion) are two Los Angeles 20-something roommates with (gasp) contrasting personalities. Extroverted Corinne struggles to coax the shy Jane away from her baking exploits in an attempt to jumpstart her social life. The two hit upon a compromise: “cakebarring,” a challenge for Jane to bring cakes to bars for a year so she can fulfill every woman’s dream: finding a man. But when Corinne receives an unexpected and unwelcome diagnosis, Jane takes it upon herself to keep the project alive.
Not So “Critical” Analysis: Amazon movies open with a title sequence not unlike that stop-motion cityscape sequence from old HBO promos. Unfortunately, this particular sequence ends in a somewhat incongruous “Amazon Studios” theater, its comfy environs beckoning to us all.
The fact that Sitting in Bars With Cakes will debut exclusively on Prime Video, like the vast majority of its output, makes that intro a little ironic. Maybe if the scene continued with us walking into a living room with scuffed furniture, laundry piled on the couch, and an abundance of dog hair, it might feel more authentic.
But then, it isn’t as if this was likely to pull a Barbie at the box office. The cakes in question — from red velvet to sage ricotta to cherry CBD — look great, and A’zion is surprisingly powerful in what could’ve been a walking, dying cliche. But that and a few other interesting casting choices (Ron Livingston and Martha Kelly as Corinne’s weirdo parents) can’t quell the suspicion that director Trish Sie just wanted an excuse to film in a bunch of L.A. watering holes.
Jane dreams of ascending from lowly mailroom worker to chef, but her lawyer parents want a lawyer daughter as well (when oh when will these soulless capitalists respect artistic passion?). This should create more friction than it does, but the only real conflict arises from Corinne’s annoyance that her friend won’t stand up for herself. The two work in the same music industry talent agency, where the boss is played Bette Midler in the truest “What is she doing here?” fashion.
Similarly puzzling is how listlessly the events of the film play out. And yet, even with the telegraphed ending and general lack of interesting characters, A’zion almost saves the movie on her own, commanding every scene she’s in (fine, except for the coma ones),
As for her friends, the actors’ portray 20-somethings like they’re in a ’90s sitcom. One makes a comment about how important this cake business is to Jane’s empowerment … and is immediately laughed off. And as Jane, Shahidi seem confused as to whether she’s in a comedy or a tearjerker.
Sitting in Bars with Cake is based on screenwriter Audrey Shulman’s book, but her previous script efforts consist pretty much solely of Hallmark Channel movies. It might explain the clumsy transitions in mood and overarching maudlinism that dogs just every moment.
Those cakes looked really good, though.
Sitting in Bars with Cake is streaming on Prime Video today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
