Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I watch movies because I enjoy them. I truly do. However, while I’m viewing a film, I’m evaluating it. I’m formulating my thoughts so I can write a review. Questions arise. Am I enjoying this? Why am I entertained by this? I can’t help it. It’s part of my process as a critic and it becomes an involuntary reaction. The greatest movies, I sort of forget to do this and I just get lost in the story. The worst, I am constantly aware that I am sitting in a theater enduring a bad movie. I am trying to assess what what makes it so awful.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot or WTF, isn’t horrible. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot to recommend it starting with a pleasant performance from comedian Tina Fey in a dramatic role. But for much of its run time, I kept asking myself, Why did this picture get made? What makes the story of Kim Baker more important than the hundreds of others that could have been dramatized? What makes this drama so unique? That this correspondent happens to be female is the best answer I can come up with.

WTF is based on reporter Kim Barker’s memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s quite a mouthful for a surprisingly simple saga. She was working for The Chicago Tribune in the 2000s, but in the film she’s a TV journalist. Part of the reason Kim is sent is due to her unmarried, childless status. From Baby Mama to 30 Rock this is an underlying theme to Tina Fey’s roles. WTF is a series of little episodes. When she meets gorgeous blonde Aussie newsperson Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie) they have a discussion about attractiveness. A “4” or “6” back home is like a “9” in Kabul. They call it the Kabubble. For the record, Kim is “Kabul cute”. Side note: Does Tina Fey really think she’s just a 4?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is the chronicle of a plucky reporter who shakes up her life by taking a job covering the war in Afghanistan. The production comes from the directing team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa who were responsible for the enjoyable romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. Robert Carlock wrote the screenplay. He was a Saturday Night Live writer from 1996 to 2001 and a show runner for the TV comedy 30 Rock. Given the background of the people involved, I hoped for an incisive and witty take on war with acerbic overtones. Yet WTF is largely forgettable, an incidental tale of a journalist’s experiences. It’s random and unexpectedly bland. Details include actor Alfred Molina who plays a lascivious Afghan prime minister that’s regularly putting the moves on her. There’s even a contrived romance featuring Martin Freeman that is as fabricated as any stock boy-meets-girl love affair you’ve ever seen. The sitcom observations are just too shallow to make this the insightful feature that it could have been. WTF indeed.