80 for Brady

Film: 80 for Brady (98 min)

Director: Kyle Marvin

Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Release Date: February 2023

“It’s better than I expected it to be.” That’s what I said to my wife after we finished watching 80 for Brady. From the preview clips (which one should never trust), I expected some ditzy rendition of four older women friends taking a trip to see their hero, Tom Brady, play in the Super Bowl. There is a fair amount of ditziness in this film, but it proves to be rather fun most of the time.

The four feisty friends—Trish, Lou, Betty, and Maura—are played by seasoned and well-loved actresses Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, and Rita Moreno (Figure 1). They bring together years of acting experience to portray this ensemble of older friends embarking on a once in a late lifetime adventure.

As the film progresses, its storyline turns more and more preposterous (including Tomlin’s character, Lou, having a direct psychic connection to Tom Brady himself), but it doesn’t matter unless one has expectations of reality in this film. Viewers will also have to tolerate, or have fun with, depending on their mood, several side excursions embedded in the main frame of the film—excursions that sometimes feel like they are there to expand the time required for a full-length feature film. For example, culinary star Guy Fieri appears as a host for a hot wing eating contest which Betty wins without breaking a sweat. And Maura, after being served a potent drug at a party, finds a high-stakes poker game which she wins with aplomb. Most of these mini events eventually come together to support the main storyline, but while they are initially playing out, they seem bizarrely tangential to the film’s main story. After the first few of these sidebar stories, I learned to let go of expectations for a well-crafted plotline and just have fun with the kooky side stories.

Fun is what this film is all about. There are some minor expressions of meaningful friendship and support among the foursome and some limp moments of inspirational positivity ensconced here and there within the film, but overall, the film’s predominant spirit is that of zany entertainment. Most mainstream films require from viewers some form of suspension of disbelief to accommodate either a story of high drama or comedic entertainment. You will need a large dose of this suspension of disbelief to enjoy this film.

80 for Brady also scores on reaching a wide audience of older adults. It has the bonding of female friendship set within a fun adventure, and it has enough embedded clips from the 2017 legendary Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons to appeal to a male viewership.

Much of the fun of this film is seeing four older women challenging the societal conventions of what older women are. They breeze their way through settings and situations that fall outside of societally ascribed norms for older women. In this sense, 80 for Brady is a counterpart to Last Vegas (Turteltaub, 2013), a film where four older male friends meet in Las Vegas for one last frat-like fling. The difference between these two films is that Last Vegas often takes itself too seriously as it attempts to weave male bonding into an otherwise inane plot line. It comes across as an unfortunate hybrid of male buddy-making and outlandish comedy. By contrast, 80 for Brady stays mainly with the fun of outsized plots and characters.

Aside from the entertainment value of this film, there could be something of substance to think about. One of the most startling things in the film is Jane Fonda’s face. It has the perpetual mask-like look of a child. It is so blatant that it left me wondering whether it is an intentional poke at our culture’s inability to accept the natural aging process. A line early in the film gives some credence to this interpretation. When she is complimented on her youthful appearance, Fonda’s character, Trish, responds with “Thank you. You know what it costs me to look like this? A fortune!” The film also gives us a brief look at Trish without her blond wig and made-over face. In a scene with her friend, Lou, she is briefly despondent over yet another breakup in a long string of short-lived romances. Wigless and disheartened, she looks vulnerable. The difference between her two faces is startling.

80 for Brady could spark some reflective discussion on our societal refusal to accept aging as a natural and valuable process and our deep-rooted preference to disguise the physical effects of aging. For another highly discussible example of this, see the recent Public Broadcasting Service documentary, Fast-Forward (Hurtig, 2021). It examines the personal reactions of several individuals to the experience of wearing something called an AGNES suit (Age Gains Now Empathy System) and an “aging makeover” where cosmetically applied latex and silicone “skin” ages their faces by roughly 30 years (reviewed in this journal; VandenBosch, 2023).

Or just forget about any deeper issues as you watch the film and enjoy it for what it is—a playful romp of fast friends through the tulips of their older lives.

– Jim Vanden Bosch

Oxford University Press / The Gerontological Society of America. Reproduced with permission of the author. Originally published in The Gerontologist, Volume 63, Issue 9, November 2023, Pages 1566–1567, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnad111