Five Star Weekend, Mental Health Days, Lots of Nepo Babies... and Why We Really Miss Nancy Meyers

August 2026

 

Someone must really like Jennifer Garner...

Because they rescued her from making cooking videos in her kitchen...

 

To give her a starring role in a Five Star Weekend ...

 

But her co-stars...Regina Hall and Chloë Sevigny are a couple of pros...

 

Who end up making Garner look like wallpaper...

In this Lifetime-Like Movie set in a house in Nantucket...

 

That none of these women would be able to afford ....

 

And don’t get me started on D’Arcy Carden...

Who was so cringe as Garner’s mom friend...and budding lesbian...

That I wanted to leave the room whenever she came on the screen...

 

The rest of the cast look like grads from Hollywood’s Nepo Baby School of Acting...

Harlow Jane... the daughter of Patricia Arquette and Thomas Jane

And West Duchovny... the child of David Duchovny and Tea Leoni...

 

Now this type of girl-bonding movie...

 

Can work as a comedy... like Bridesmaids...

 

Or be serious... as was Steel Magnolias...

 

But more often than not...

 

It can just be generic...such as Book Club and 80 for Brady

 

Where someone decides to throw together some well known actresses...

And not have to pay too much attention to plot or character development...

 

Which then means this genre ...

Like other female coded movies...

Needs to be aspirational...

 

In that Nancy Meyers kind of way...

 

And if you don’t know what I’m talking about...

Check out Father of the Bride, Something’s Gotta Give and The Intern...

 

But in Five Star Weekend...

 

Do we want that house.... no

 

It looks like a showroom for a furniture store in Omaha...

That was accessorized by someone who thought every single flat surface should be covered with something...

 

Their clothes... nope...

 

The best I can say is they resembled something I imagine an acolyte of Lily Pulitzer would come up with...

 

The food...maybe...

 

But aren’t we past making smiley faces out of fruit on our pancakes?

 

Now there were a couple of nice-looking love interests for these women...

Henry Eikenberry...

And Timothy Olyphant... who is aging well...

 

And whoever owns that baby blue Bronco is making book...

Because it seems to be Hollywood’s “I’m not trying too hard” cool dude car of choice this year...

Because it also turned up in Shrinking...

 

But there was nothing remotely interesting about this series...

Where every joyous moment looked performative... and painfully forced...

 

And you know most of these women are unlikeable...

When you end up rooting for the mistress of the grieving widow’s husband...

 

And do we really need a film where mom concentrating on her career...

Is given as the reason why her husband was fooling around...

 

Aren’t we supposed to be past that?

 

Now there is also a critique in this series about how social influencers...

Make everything in their family’s lives a photo op...

 

And Regina Hall does get to do a bit slamming the Gen Z work ethic...

 

And the current trend to take time off from work...

Paid... of course...

For mental health leave...

So you can go on a yoga retreat to Bali or spend 6 months walking your dog in upstate New York...

 

For more on this trend see Maya Sulkin’s recent article in the Free Press...

 

In Five Star Weekend, what leads to Hall’s on-screen rant...

 

Which, of course, gets her in BIG trouble...

 

Is a professional female soccer player...

Who would rather party with her boyfriend than spend time on the pitch...

But claims she is really taking a mental health break...

 

So while we are thinking about women’s sports...

 

This plot device makes a nice segue for my upcoming review....

On the return of everyone’s favorite soccer coach, Ted Lasso....

 

As he returns to England to coach a girls team...

 

And after watching what has gone down with the WNBA...

 

I can’t wait to see how that turns out...

 

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