Kids Under 12 Drink Free: I review the “AbFab” movie & “Bojack Horseman”

Kids Under 12 Drink Free: I review the “AbFab” movie & “Bojack Horseman” July 29, 2016

together!

The third season of Bojack Horseman arrived the same day the long-awaited Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie opened here in D.C. So audiences who want to watch appetitive people careening through aimless lives have two starkly opposed portrayals of antiheroes who gobble drugs and guzzle booze, corrupt minors, and abase themselves for fame and maybe kill people.

AbFab is the simpler pleasure. The movie plays like an extended episode of the TV show, in which lifelong best friends—neurotic Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and ferocious Patsy (Joanna Lumley)—stumble and scramble their way through the worlds of puff-piece media and pop fashion. AbFab lets catastrophic excess be fun. (Arguably you can’t have fun without it. If it were less catastrophic we’d just call it “joy.”)

more–just realized another ’90s-vs-’10s contrast here might be that AbFab‘s core relationship is a friendship, men come & go but Eddie & Patsy are eternal etc, whereas Bojack is much more intent on romantic relationships and marriages. I forget which character–might be Bojack himself–lists “friends” as something you use to fill the void of your self. Bojack’s friendships are pretty much all he has by way of human relationships, and I’m not saying the show *~*denigrates friendship*~* or any such thing; but its focus is shifted way, way toward romantic relationships compared to AbFab, and I think that’s partly a difference in era.


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