Wine Country

In the annals of film history, calling your friends from your younger days and going away to celebrate something is one of the most tired troupes. It is rarely enjoyable for any of the characters – especially if it's a horror movie and they start getting slaughtered one by one – and many times it's not that enjoyable for the audience. Attempting to break the clich�d cycle is Amy Poehler's new film "Wine Country," available on Netflix.

Friends since their days as waitresses at a pizza joint back in Chicago, six longtime friends have each gone their separate ways to make a name for themselves in the world. On the eve of one of the women's 50th birthday, Poehler's Abby wrangles them all together for girls' weekend to Napa Valley. What follows is a weekend full of neuroses and decades' worth of hostility boiling over to the surface. Each of the women is dealing with her own personal issues; whether it's marital, professional, or health-related, each is battling something that they are withholding from the group.

Poehler, who has previously helmed episodes of her hit show "Parks and Recreation," makes the jump to direct her first feature film. While competently overseeing that the film moves along at an appropriate pace, there are times where the scene lighting is abnormally dark from the rest of the film. Overall, "Wine Country" feels like an Amy Poehler production, based on the sensibility of projects that she has starred in and produced previously.

As an actor, Poehler tends to be attracted by material that is just left of the mainstream. She's appeared in a number of independent films and most of her mainstream roles aren't aimed at the standard blockbuster comedy crowd. It's usually the quirkier roles that suit her best. So, it should come as no surprise that her debut effort feels like it is an indie film itself. The good thing about it streaming on Netflix is that smaller films targeting a niche audience are able to find the widest audience possible.

Written by Emily Spivey and Liz Cackowski, who both appear in the film, "Wine Country" goes down easy like a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio after a long day at the office. But much of what transpires will leave you with sour grapes. The plot gets bogged down by all of the interpersonal conflicts within the group and it many of the developments have a paint-by-numbers feel to them that the audience will see coming from a mile away. Even worse, some of the worries that the women are consumed by turn out to be all in their head, fooling the audience to invest in the struggle only to have the rug pulled out from underneath us.

What elevates the run of the mill film is the cast. The women, who all worked on "Saturday Night Live" together, have an easy chemistry and their comedic abilities continue to age like a fine wine. At times it feels like you are actually just getting a peek into a trip that they took and just happened to have a film crew in tow. Each of the women in the main cast plays their part, but they make sure not to overshadow the rest of the ensemble in an effort to steal the spotlight from them.

The one exception is Tina Fey, who has a minor part as the owner of the house the group rents. She plays the character as low key, however, whenever she comes on screen the film is instantly more entertaining. Part of her appeal here is that she is Tina Fey and keeps popping in and out of the film for brief appearances. The character she is playing, Tammy, is better in small doses and would become grating if she was a lead in the film.

At the end of the day, "Wine Country" feels like Poehler decided that she was going to gather a bunch of her friends to write and perform together again. The off-screen comradery transcends to the women's onscreen chemistry, and might just make you sentimental enough to open a bottle of wine and reminisce about the good old days while watching the film. For those less nostalgic folks, it might just be better to grab the bottle of wine and actually go out with your friends.