Direct-to-streaming comedies occupy an interesting crossroads within the landscape of new releases. The quantity that gets released is immense and somewhat depressing, regularly noted as films custom-designed to be passively half-watched while engaged in some other activity. But the flip side of that is, if one of them decides to try to live up to more than its predetermined reputation, it has an awfully low bar to clear. Bring in Quiz Lady, a Hulu comedy that seems like it should settle in right alongside the most forgettable of the bunch. But it distinguishes itself enough from other films of its ilk, by leaning into its familiar structure and tropes, to end up pretty funny and surprisingly sincere.
No, Quiz Lady never rises above or subverts what it sells you on the tin—you probably know how the heartfelt comedy, between two sisters who have to work together to accomplish their ultimate goal, will end. But it picks up the slack where any classic comedy finds its success: Chemistry between its two leads and a script that locates the sentiment in their relationship, among some mostly successful laughs.
The road to the revelations in director Jessica Yu’s film is a bit ungainly, but it gets the job done: Anne (Awkwafina) is a reticent, introverted, mid-30s single woman whose life is defined by the day-to-day tedium of being alive. Her days consist of staring at Excel spreadsheets in her depressing grayscale office, full of coworkers who don’t respect her, before she goes home to her depressing grayscale apartment, where she orders Amazon products that don’t work and endures the grumbling of her bitter senior neighbor Francine (Holland Taylor). Her only respite is the same TV game show she’s watched every night since she was a child: Can’t Stop the Quiz, a Jeopardy–ish type program whose Alex Trebek is named Terry McTeer (Will Ferrell), an idol so dear to Anne that she owns a limited-edition bobblehead of his likeness.
Anne’s obsession with Can’t Stop the Quiz has led her to become a master of general trivia, a fact noted by her gregarious, slightly obnoxious and grifting older sister Jenny (Sandra Oh), who comes to town after the nursing home loses their mother (don’t worry, she just ran away with her boyfriend to Macau). The two learn that their mom is in massive gambling debt; the mob comes to collect and kidnaps Anne’s dog until the ransom is paid, which prompts Jenny to push Anne to compete on the show to earn the funds. A familiar scenario, in which an incompatible pair must learn to get along and maybe learn a thing or two about themselves along the way.
Screenwriter Jen D’Angelo (Totally Killer, Hocus Pocus 2) isn’t reinventing the genre here, just having her own nugget of fun with it, though sometimes at the expense of full coherence. There is a version of this story that trims the fat and streamlines the events. The added drama of mob enforcers may drive an extra bit of urgency, but by the end feels extraneous to the real conflict between Anne and Jenny. And while this is ostensibly pitched as an offbeat sisterhood road trip comedy, it comes up short, crafting too many zany scenarios for the two to encounter.