The Country Club
The rich, they’re just like us except for their views on relative effort, merit, societal norms or achievement. With no outside desires driving them on their world revolves around keeping up their existing parasocial relationships (because in a world where everything is fake every relationship is parasocial) and maintaining appearances. The only thing they are good for externally is to provide resources to the hard working up-and-comers who are trying to achieve … in order to become just like them. It’s a dynamic ripe for satire and if there is a failing to Fiona and Sophia Robert’s sly take down of country club culture it’s that it’s not weird enough.
The sisters Robert here are the sisters Cartwright, a pair of ambitious teens with great ambitions for what they want out of life but few resources to make it happen. The answer to their problems arrives in the form of a letter mistakenly sent to Elsa (Sophia Robert) who happens to share a name with the influencer daughter of a Connecticut blue blood family. Invited to a junior golf tournament, aspiring player Sophia sees a chance to win enough money for college while Tina (Fiona Robert) sees the opportunity to acquire investors to support her as a fashion designer. What they find is beyond their wildest imaginings, a world of petulance and expectation embodied in the beret wearing weirdness of Roger Kowalski (Higgins), a lost little boy who only cares about winning the tournament but doesn’t particularly care about playing in it.
A sly and witty screenplay by the Robert sisters is the engine that powers The Country Club, filled with small but perfectly placed side characters engendering just the right amount of weirdness. Like Caddshack and other class warfare comedies before it, the dynamic between the put upon club workers and their insouciant employers is its core. It’s a little constrained by a smaller budget and cast, putting most of that onto the shoulders of beleaguered Lumer (Ormond), Roger’s caddy and only friend who tries to satisfy is every whim even if it means playing for him during the tournament. It’s a lot to put on one character’s shoulders, alongside becoming the focus of Tina’s romantic attentions and he can’t quite carry it all but he also doesn’t need to. The Country Club wisely moves along to one of its more fanciful supporting characters to keep its more conventional aspects from dragging things down.
Director Fiona Robert shows a keen eye for filling those roles, from James Urbaniak’s sleezy club manager (who we could sadly use much more of) who loves nothing more than tormenting his assistant, to Magaret Ladd’s elder grand dame of the tournament or Elaine Hendrix as the domineering mother who answers many questions about why Roger is the way he is. Everything speeds along at a tidy 89 minutes which doesn’t give most characters more than exactly what the plot needs of them, but nor do they need it. Do we need to spend more than a single outing with chatty, self-involved Mary-Anne Montreal (Chow) or the handsome and self-involved Marshall (Levi) to get what we need from them? Not really. Familiarity really does breed contempt; any more time with any of them would have ruined the joke and increased the dullness.
In no one is that more obvious than Roger himself. Funny in small doses, Higgins’ pampered momma’s boy is less and less funny and more and more irritating the longer he is on screen. Not least because pulls attention away from the more interesting Cartwright sisters and offers little of interest in return as he slowly swallows the film whole. A cardinal warning of the old saying about less being more, Roger nearly derails everything interesting in The Country Club. It's not enough to hide the promise of future comedy outings from the Robert’s, just a hope that they leave buffoons in the background next time.
Starring Sophia Robert, Fiona Robert, John Higgins, Sean Ormond and James Urbaniak. Directed by Fiona Robert.