‘Sitting in Bars with Cake’ review: A wry and touching story of friendship — and a year’s supply of baked goods
It’s right there in the trailer: Cake, and cancer. Less obvious in the same trailer for the new Amazon Prime Video feature “Sitting in Bars with Cake,” premiering Friday, is that there’s considerable effectiveness and genuine feeling found in Audrey Shulman’s adaptation of her 2015 book, based on her blog of how she baked her way through a full year of “cakebarring,” with the express intention of meeting guys in Los Angeles.
Shulman’s best friend, meantime, received a devastating health diagnosis, but at her urging Shulman soldiered on with her project. In a freely invented variation on that premise, “Sitting in Bars with Cake” creates a story, from ingredients that won’t strike anyone as radically fresh, transcending formula and focused, smartly, on a moving story of a friendship, brought to life by Yara Shahidi and Odessa A’zion.
One author biography floating around online describes Shulman as an “avid baker and relentless hostess.” The film’s protagonist is different: avid baker, yes, but Shahidi’s character, Jane, starts out as a tightly wired, socially anxious woman in her early 20s, trying to live up to her parents’ expectations of greatness. Corinne, her longtime friend and fellow Phoenix-to-L.A. transplant, is nothing like Jane; she’s a wisenheimer and a blithe extrovert played by A’zion, best known for the Netflix series “Grand Army” and the recent “Hellraiser” reboot.
Corinne and Jane work at Capitol Records, Jane as a mail clerk with uncertain designs on a law career, Corinne as an enterprising music agent in training. (Bette Midler, always a pleasure, plays her imperious but warmhearted boss.) For Jane, baking is her preferred anti-stress self-medication. One night, lugging a beautiful cake for Corinne’s birthday, Jane impresses a bar full of semi-eligibles with her baking prowess.
So why not get busy with it? Why not “bait guys with sugar?” With Corinne’s nudge, Jane embarks on a yearlong experiment in a carefully mapped array of Tiki bars, biker bars, country and Western bars, Silver Lake nerd hangouts, everything L.A. has to offer, male-wise.
Shulman, now a screenwriter, happens to be a good one: She’s quippy and frequently funny, and knows how to change gears without too much strain. “Sitting in Bars with Cake” director Trish Sie (“Step Up All In,” “Pitch Perfect 3″) is no stranger to commercial engineering, but her work here leaves room for some easygoing interplay, in more than one key. Even after Corinne’s cancer diagnosis, the movie proceeds as a series of shameless L.A. tourism campaign spots, from the initial establishing shot of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel pool area, at peak mob-scene by the cabanas, to a scene set in Miceli’s restaurant, just off Hollywood Boulevard. Ordinarily, that slickness would be enough to stop a film like this cold. This one’s different, and better.
The stars, and the key supporting ringers, come in extremely handily. Shahidi (a young veteran of both “Black-ish” and “Grown-ish”) avoids turning Jane into a type, or a mere introvert-to-butterfly cliche. Her vibe is relaxed and intuitive enough to sell whatever’s up with Shulman’s week-by-week, cake-by-cake setups. Same with A’zion. Los Angeles, like any perplexing big city, is full of odd-couple roommates, whether they’re old friends or new accidents of fate, and though “Sitting in Bars with Cake” goes in a clearly charted direction, there’s enough going on between the plot points to make it feel like there’s something real at stake between these women.
Corinne’s parents, salt of the earth but slightly off in the best way, give Ron “Mr. Reliable” Livingston and Martha Kelly (the deadpan site-visit evaluator from “Marriage Story”) a lovely double act. The movie tells the story of “a year spent in hospitals and bars,” and it’s laid out as such, in a spoken line of dialogue. As Jane devotes all the time and love she can to Corinne, while the doctors monitor the brain tumor and its effects, screenwriter Shulman has the grace to allow Corinne a clear-eyed set of complicated responses.
“I should be learning some major life lesson right now,” she says at one point, in an unguarded moment with her friend, confidant and intrepid baker. “But I’m just annoyed.” The scenes between A’zion and Shahidi aren’t the icing on this cake. They’re the cake.
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'SITTING IN BARS WITH CAKE'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong language, some drug use, sexual references and thematic elements)
Running time: 1:59
How to watch: On Prime Video Friday
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