Queen Bees Review: Retirement Home Mean Girls

Release date: June 11, 2021
Running time: 101 minutes
Directed By: Michael Lembeck
Written By: Donald Martin (screenplay), Harrison Powell (based on a story by)
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jane Curtin, Loretta Devine, Ann-Margret, Christopher Lloyd, James Caan

After reluctantly agreeing to move in to a senior's home, a woman encounters a clique of mean-spirited women and an amorous widower.

Queen Bees is basically Mean Girls at a retirement home, with cliques, an out of place newcomer, and a mean, overbearing leader of the pack.  But instead of high school drama, we have a similar environment but in a geriatric setting.  Surprisingly, it seems like a lot of the subject matter is the same despite the older age of the participants: boys, friendship, and keeping your place in the social order.  And Queen Bees does have a cute start and some very interesting personalities.  You will easily recognize the stars in this film as they all have illustrious careers, and seeing them all on the screen is a treat.  But this film lets them play some more out there personalities with very different quirks than you are used to.  And as you would expect from a film set in the silver years, the humor veers more towards an older age demographic, with some funny old people moments.  

But although the film does feel like Mean Girls for an older crowd, the movie does not have the same raw humor that the former film had.  Queen Bees definitely has its moments, but for the most part I just did not find the humor that funny.  Perhaps the film is not for me, but I just did not think the jokes landed.  And for a film about people set in their ways, there are some very abrupt character changes to move the story along.  Janet, the main Queen Bee, is so insanely toxic at the start but goes through a rather abrupt shift partway through.  And she is not alone in the quick change department, as many of the characters seem to change or evolve rather quickly.  And although I liked the characters, I did not love their dialogue due to the writing.  It just did not grab me and make me care enough about their predicament and what happened to them. Overall, this film felt like high school for old people, with all the drama but fewer laughs than I expected.

Queen Bees is retirement home Mean Girls, with all the drama that you would expect from that combination but with an aged sense of humor.

Rent it.

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Queen Bees is available in theaters, digitally, and on demand on June 11, 2021.  For showtimes, click here.

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