In what seems to be the year of the Jane Fonda renaissance, she and Lily Tomlin star in their second film of 2023, the aptly titled Moving On, which also stars Malcolm Mcdowell and Richard Roundtree. The film looked to be another hit for Fonda and Tomlin, after the surprise success of 80 For Brady. With an interesting premise and some world class acting talent behind it, I was hoping- not expecting- to see a funny, moving, and engaging film that made me happy when I left the theater. Unfortunately, what we got felt more lackluster than lively.
The movie follows Jane Fonda as Claire, an older grandmother who sets out to attend her best friend’s funeral. There, she encounters and re-encounters some long lost friends, including Lily Tomlin as Evelyn, her old roommate in college and best friend, Ralph, played by Richard Roundtree, her former husband, and Howard, played by Malcolm McDowell, who is the husband of their deceased friend. Claire vows to murder Howard that weekend in retribution for an ill act he performed many years ago, while her experiences with her rekindled friendships warm her clearly bitter heart.
While the film was funny enough as comedies go, I felt that there were long stretches of cringy dialogue that just took me out of watching it. In particular, the scene where they go to buy a gun jumped out at me because it wasn’t particularly funny. You could tell the idea was there to make a funny scene, but the execution just felt lackluster. In a film that relied so heavily on jokes rather than visual gags, I was surprised how often it didn’t work. However, some scenes, like Howard’s Eulogy, I found to be especially funny.
Moving On relied exclusively on its characters and their performances to succeed. While some, like McDowell and Tomlin, did a great job of commanding the screen and making it interesting, I was disappointed in how lackluster the overall acting performances were. It felt like in many parts the cast was simply just phoning it in, and it came out on screen. Fonda in particular was surprisingly flat. I was also unimpressed with how poor and unimaginative the writing was. It was just so unmemorable, and there was nothing there to keep me interested or that I couldn’t predict as it was playing out on screen.
Where the film succeeded most is surprisingly in it’s emotionality and the dynamics of the characters. Tomlin and Fonda clearly have chemistry working together. That was obvious the moment they were on screen together. But I was also pleasantly surprised by this film’s romantic chemistry between Fonda’s Claire and Roundtree’s Ralph. The on-screen pair felt believable and it’s where I felt the happiest watching. The climax of the film also delved heavily into the emotions and the drama, and those scenes worked well too. It made my time watching the film feel almost worth it.
Final Thoughts
Moving On just didn’t do enough to keep me super engaged while watching. I found myself checking the time waiting for it’s extremely quick runtime to be over. Worse, it was wholly forgettable, and I really didn’t even have much to note down during my viewing. The absolute best part of the film came when Claire’s corgi was on screen. At most, Moving On is an average comedy that has moments of clarity but really doesn’t warrant any sort of second thought. In a few years it’ll most likely be forgotten and the world will have moved on in the ether of VOD movie viewing. If you’re wondering whether to catch this film at your local theater, you will not be upset having skipped this film.
