Not All The Answers

Quiz Lady, now streaming on Hulu, stars Akwafina as lonely introvert Anne Yum and Sandra Oh as Anne’s free-spirited older sister Jenny. They lived through a traumatic childhood together, but grew apart as adults. Anne finds comfort in the ritual of watching her favorite game show every night at 7 pm and playing along with her geriatric pug, Mr. Linguini, by her side. When their gambling addict mother runs off to Macau, she inadvertently reunites the estranged sisters, and also leaves behind an $80,000 debt. Their mom’s shady bookie abducts Linguini as collateral and the sisters must find a way to repay him quickly. Jenny, who fancies herself a life-coach and believes in manifestation, encourages Anne to use her trivia ability to go on the quiz show and win the money they need to get Linguini back.

As an amateur “quiz lady” myself (I appeared on Jeopardy! in 2016), the quizzing angle intrigued me. However, the film does not spend much time in the quiz show world and follows the formula of a classic buddy comedy. Where Jenny is a chaotic mess; Anne is rigid, orderly. The duo even takes a brief road trip to Philadelphia, landing at an odd “inn & spa” run by a semi-period accurate Ben Franklin impersonator (Tony Hale).

The story arc between the estranged sisters brings the strongest moments of the film, largely due to the excellent Sandra Oh as Jenny, displaying an aptitude for over-the-top comedy not seen since her days on Arli$$. Unfortunately, the character of Anne, while clearly the less showy part, is also less well-realized. We don’t get to see how she amassed her knowledge for trivia, or what interests her besides the quiz show and her dog.

Director Jessica Yu is an Oscar-winning documentarian and veteran TV director. Her filmography may not make her the obvious choice for a broad comedy, but she clearly has a sensibility for off-kilter humor which manages to break through in small moments amid the formulaic plot.

The supporting cast also features amusing turns by Will Ferrell and Holland Taylor. As the host of CSTQ, Terry McTeer, Ferrell does not simply rehash his Alex Trebek impression from Saturday Night Live. In fact, he plays it pretty straight and gives McTeer a warm, paternal demeanor rather than the pricklier personality of Trebek. Taylor, as Anne’s cantankerous neighbor, has one good scene and a couple of running gags, one which unfortunately doesn’t pay off and one which does in a surprising, but most-welcome cameo.

Now, a brief digression on the object of Anne’s obsession: “Can’t Stop the Quiz,” a half hour game show with a truly baffling format. Exactly why you can’t stop the quiz remains unstated. They seem to film and and broadcast live on a nightly basis, leaving no time for do-overs or answer reviews. In reality, they’d film a game show like this months in advance,  several shows a day. Under the CSTQ shooting schedule, longtime champion Ron Heacock (Jason Schwartzman gleefully hamming it up in veneers and a spray tan) and his stand-by charades partner would have been on-call in L.A. for the past four months.

They divide the show into three rounds with the first round being a traditional three-podium and buzzer set up where the host asks contestants  general knowledge questions. The second round, Head to Head, has the remaining two contestants just listing…things. This task certainly makes the fictional contestants look intelligent, but would be nearly impossible to pull off in real life as presented here. In the third round, they flip a giant coin to decide whether the players will “say it” or “show it.” If it lands on “show it” the player must then act out answers that their partner, who has been waiting in the wings the whole time, must guess. We don’t see what happens if it lands on “say it,” perhaps a round of Taboo?

One aspect the film does get right is the public reaction to Anne’s trivia prowess. The day after her video posts, reaction videos appear on YouTube with click bait titles like “Quiz Lady is what’s wrong with America” and “Quiz Lady: Hating her is racist, but liking her is even more racist.” She almost immediately gets a phone call at work from a sex pest. The movie doesn’t show her receiving letters from prison, which all female Jeopardy! contestants, successful or not, have experienced. But she probably got some of those, too.

2023 has been a strong year for women-led comedies, with Quiz Lady joining the likes of box office juggernaut Barbie, critical darlings Bottoms and Joy Ride, and horror-comedy Totally Killer ,which was also from a screenplay by Quiz Lady writer Jen D’Angelo. While it could have benefitted from a higher joke quotient or stronger development of Anne’s character, Quiz Lady has enough laugh lines, quirky character moments, and throwaway background jokes to keep it consistently funny throughout.