Stream It Or Skip It: ‘(Un)lucky Sisters’ on Netflix, A Featherweight Siblings-Bonding Comedy from Argentina

(Un)lucky Sisters (now on Netflix) is the story of two estranged half-siblings brought together by the passing of their not-much-of-a-father. The Argentinian comedy from director Fabiana Tiscornia is breezy and a bit silly and features two leads who show some potential to inspire laughs and a bit of pathos, but for some strange reason, the movie jams on the brakes just when it’s about to get truly compelling. Why it does this, I don’t know. I hereby present my mildly flummoxed reaction to this movie that seems destined to be swallowed by the ever-ravenous Netflix content menus (burp), never to be seen again.

(UN)LUCKY SISTERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jesica (Sofia Morandi) and Angela (Leticia Siciliani) scamper down a sidewalk and hide behind a large potted plant. Sirens echo in the distance. In voiceover, they explain that they’re fugitives. Cops are chasing them and mobsters are chasing them and this suitcase they’re rolling around is why. Could the movie get any more exciting than this? It sure could, but it’s my duty to tell you that it won’t. Then it flashes back a few days, to the boring stuff that isn’t as funny or insightful as it could be, and now you know why the movie begins with the on-the-lam-with-a-suitcase-fulla-whatever stuff.

Angela works as a teaching assistant in a kindergarten, complete with the dorky little smock she has to wear and the hurricane of hyperactive children and the no money to fix the roof or pay anyone a decent living. She goes home to her security guard boyfriend who’s more interested in watching deadly dull security cams on his phone than listening to her. She worriedly takes a pregnancy test and breathes a deep sigh of relief when it’s negative. He wants to have kids and Angela – well, if she has a head on her shoulders at all, she may be looking at him as a less than ideal representative of the gene pool. 

Jesica works at a greasepit fast-food burger joint. Stupid little hat, condescending boss, slob-ass customers. Miserable, just miserable. She goes home to an apartment where she lives with her broke mother (Lorena Vega) who stuffs the place with pregnant yoga ladies (she’s apparently the world’s least in-touch-with-her-chakras instructor) and far too many other people who might be her siblings or cousins or something, that’s never really explained. She can’t even get a moment of peace in the toilet without heavy-breathing preggos piling in for reasons that theoretically should be totally hilarious, but kinda aren’t.

Both of these early-20something women get some news: Their father is dead. They’re half-sisters, rather disaffected. Have they met before? Maybe, maybe not; the screenplay is weirdly sketchy about this type of detail. They’re chilly and prickly and occasionally hostile with each other. Angela is upset that her dad is kaput, even though it’s been many years since she last saw him. Jesica never met the guy, so she’s like is there an inheritance? when she could stand to be a little more sensitive among the bereaved. He seemed to be of some prominence here in Buenos Aires, with connections to important people on either side of the legal divide, and there’s talk of “the Osterfil case,” where he was defending himself against bribery charges. Hmm. His personal secretary tells Angela and Jesica that all he has is an apartment so they check it out and it’s a fancy palatial place in a high rise with an iPad that controls everything – including a secret panel in a wall that’s hiding stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of cash. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a plot!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: (Un)lucky Sisters is like a washed-out, laughless Step Brothers.

Performance Worth Watching: There are multiple moments where Morandi and Siciliani teeter on the cusp of being truly funny or offering insight into their characters, but the screenplay – seemingly terrified of being substantive – just. Won’t. Let them. 

Memorable Dialogue: This movie’s prime example of “witty banter”: 

Angela: We’re not gonna be friends on Facebook or in life or anywhere.

Jesica: What about Instagram? Do you have Instagram?

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The primary conflict in (Un)lucky Sisters is the personality clash between siblings: Angela is prudent. Jesica is impulsive. Will they EVER get along? And is there any more substance to them as characters? Answers: Hopefully and barely, in that order. I guess you could say that one shows one’s true self when confronted with a pile of money that might be dirty and might not be missed if you took it, and you won’t be surprised to learn that Angela wants to leave it right there and avoid any potential for trouble, and Jesica wants to R-U-N-N-O-F-T with it, and never the twain shall meet. 

Well, until the screenplay decides it needs one of those wearingly shopworn montage sequences in which these hard-luck women take just a few bills and hit the mall for a shopping spree. Uh oh – are they bonding? Like actual sisters might? Could they find some common ground and get to know each other or something totally outta control like that? No spoilers, but don’t forget that two plus two is always and forever going to be four. 

This is all fine, just fine fodder for a light comedy, but (Un)lucky Sisters is so featherweight, a flea fart could launch it to Uranus. At first Jesica and Angela are each other’s antagonist, until they realize that the world itself antagonizes them, so they should probably join forces and become a two-headed protagonist. And even then, this description implies more substance than the film actually has – there’s a scene in which they each share a secret so they can get to know each other, and that’s the long and short and deep and shallow of these characters, emphasis on shallow. Which would be OK if they were given something clever to do or say; the minimal-stakes plot finds them engaging in forgettable dialogue while aimlessly meandering the high-end avenues of Buenos Aires with a suitcase full of cash, then finding themselves trapped in an anticlimax so underwhelming, it feels like it never really happened. 

Our Call: SKIP IT. Not every movie needs to be an award-worthy character study plumbing the depths of the human condition, but (Un)lucky Sisters is just too flimsy to be truly engaging.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.