Last Vegas

In Jon Turteltaub’s film some of Las Vegas is really Atlanta: photography started in Vegas in November 2012 and moved to Georgia that same month. Jack Nicholson was attached early in development but is not in the picture. The fifth name beside the four men is the surprise. Diana, played by Mary Steenburgen, sings in a Vegas lounge; Steenburgen really sings here, and Cup of Trouble on the soundtrack is her vocal. AARP gave her a separate honour at its 2013 awards, its citation noting she wrote her own song. At that ceremony it won best buddy picture and was up for best comedy, which went to The Way, Way Back; AARP gives the buddy category to films about friendship between people over 50. Commercially it beat expectation: a 28 million dollar production, it opened third with 16.3 million dollars and reached 134.4 million worldwide, and on 27 November 2013 it overtook The Woman in Black as CBS Films’s highest grossing release. A good fit if you want jokes that set up nostalgia and puncture it at once, the way a bottle of scotch kept for 50 years is finally opened and tastes awful. Not for a viewer impatient with the Vegas section delaying the real subject, a grudge left by two friends loving the same woman.