It’s 2024, and all throughout Hollywood, women of a certain age are either having sex with pop stars or going on vacation. At a time when TV series and movies finally seem ready to explore the idea that your life doesn’t end when you sail past 45, we have suddenly been blessed with a new era of girls’-trip movies. But these films are more grown-up, often showing a bunch of esteemed older actresses getting together for traveling and high jinks. According to movie execs, the kookiest thing a middle-aged woman could do is plan a trip with two to five of her closest friends.
That theory is fine by me, because these movies are like 90-minute brain massages, and I love to watch them on planes or while, I don’t know, cooking dinner on a weeknight. They are also, potentially, great vacation inspo. As we all start to plan out our own summer trips, I had to find out, Would these wacky old-lady adventures actually be fun to go on? Here’s what I think.
80 for Brady (2023)
In a movie that may or may not have been written by Tom Brady’s publicity team, four besties — Lou (Lily Tomlin), Trish (Jane Fonda), Maura (Rita Moreno), and Betty (Sally Field) — schlep to Houston for the 2017 Super Bowl because they’ve spent the past several years lusting over Brady and, by extension, loving the Patriots. (This is actually based on a true story.) You don’t need to know a whole lot about who they are, but every character is endearing in her own cranky way, including Trish, who dresses like a sportier version of Dolly Parton and writes erotica about Rob Gronkowski. She’s the Samantha, obviously.
Accommodations: They’re kind of roughing it. I’ve never traveled to a city hosting the Super Bowl, but it looks like a hellish combo of Disney World and a state-school tailgate. Their hotel is crawling with amped-up fans and covered in life-size cardboard cutouts of football players. That part, at least, the gals are really enjoying — they take a few to their room, where the four of them are sharing two full-size beds. Anything for this guy, I guess?
Vibe: The stress level for most of this movie is way higher than it should be on a group trip. They spend an entire party basically tripping on potent weed gummies while also trying to hunt down their tickets, which Betty left at a hot-dog-eating contest hosted by Guy Fieri earlier in the day. (She won.) They are basically looking for these tickets until the moment the game starts, and let’s just say the obstacles do not stop there. I’m glad they had fun, but if you ask me, no ex of Gisele Bündchen’s is worth all this.
Wine Country (2019)
These women are significantly younger than their fellow movie travelers in this lineup, but they are very much on a group trip with the unifying theme of “We’re getting old.” Therefore, they qualify. Abby (Amy Poehler, also directing) control-freaks five of her oldest friends into a Napa Airbnb to celebrate Rebecca’s (Rachel Dratch) 50th birthday for a weekend. This group has a really annoying habit of quipping “Things we say now!” whenever something related to physical ailments or bedtimes comes up. Needless to say, this trip will be about friendship, comediennes, and aging disgracefully.
Accommodations: Their rental is hosted by an overbearing Tina Fey, who keeps showing up to drop off random shit. Also, Jason Schwartzman suddenly pops up to let them know he “comes with the house” and basically cooks, drives, tour-guides, and does whatever else they need him to do around the house. There are way too many strangers for my comfort in this rental, but the cabin-y accoutrements are nice.
Vibe: Toxic from the jump. A tarot reader (Cherry Jones, incredible) correctly reads the house’s “juju” as “no bueno” on day one, and it only gets worse from there. Abby keeps trying to micromanage the activities, and everyone is in turn trying to hide how annoyed they are because she planned the whole thing. Obviously, things eventually come to a head, but at least the Pinot is flowing liberally and the sunsets are consistently gorgeous. Also, they manage to squeeze in an incredible dance party, and Paula Pell hands out vibrators to all the girls. I have faith this friend group can get the group vacation right in 30 years.
Sex and the City 2 (2010)
An unfortunate early installment in this canon — and one that lands squarely in the younger camp but counts because Samantha spends most of the movie panicking about menopause — Sex and the City 2 follows TV’s most famously horny women on a first-class flight to Abu Dhabi, where they ogle at niqabs and complain about how they are not allowed to be horny here. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?
Accommodations: Looking beyond the deeply racist plot points for one second, this is a really luxurious, all-expenses-paid trip during which everyone gets personal servants (yikes, but they like it) and their own personal hotel suite. The food looks incredible, the shopping is divine, and you have to hear Samantha say “Lawrence of my labia” only once. I still wouldn’t go with them, but it doesn’t sound like the worst vacation setup.
Vibe: Everyone’s getting along great — which is easy to do when you can all retreat to your private hotel suites for the evening — except that Carrie’s friends have to listen to her rationalize an emotional affair with Aidan the entire trip. Things take a nightmarish turn when the group is unceremoniously kicked out of their hotel after Samantha is caught having sex on the beach. Carrie loses her passport, Sam has a meltdown when her Birkin bag spills all over the street — and frankly, these women barely make it out of the country intact. As has been previously established, none of these women are good at overcoming even minor inconveniences, and this trip is embarrassing. No thank you!
Summer Camp (2024)
Renowned self-help guru Ginny Moon (Kathy Bates) borderline bullies her old camp friends Mary (Alfre Woodard) and Nora (Diane Keaton) into attending their sleepaway camp’s 50-year reunion, which is apparently a thing. Much like Romy Mars, she and her ginger-bob wig will do anything to hang out with camp friends, so she drives her luxury tour bus emblazoned with her catchphrase — “Get your SHIT together!” — to pick them up and head for the woods. Also in attendance: Their longtime nemeses, the Pretty Committee, and two of their childhood crushes: Stevie D. (Eugene Levy in an all-time collaboration with his volumizing blow-dryer) and Tommy (Dennis Haysbert).
Accommodations: Cobweb-covered bunk beds at first, but Ginny swiftly commissions a warp-speed renovation that would have Bobby Berk seething. (She claims to have called in a favor from “my friend Martha.”) The result is a perfectly satisfactory boutique-hotel setup with pleated floor lamps and three-wick candles.
Vibe: Someone more annoying than me might call this glamping. The adults are invited to do white-water rafting, archery, horseback riding, pottery, and a ropes course, some of which sound fun. Camp counselor Nicole Richie confiscates everyone’s phones at the beginning, which is annoyingly self-righteous. The characters complain once about the canteen-style food, but also they appear to be getting served Cosmos and martinis at the events, so it can’t be that bad? If sleepaway camps did throw 50-year-reunion weekends, I buy that this is what they might look like minus the Queer Eye–ified bunks. This seems like a decent trip overall, but I personally would not want to vacation with a bunch of people I knew when I was a tween.
Book Club: The Next Chapter (2023)
This movie is a sequel to Book Club, which is a key installment in the “women of a certain age being horny” canon but, crucially, not a group trip. In the sequel, the girls — Diane (Diane Keaton, inexplicably playing a character with her same name), rich hotelier Vivian (Jane Fonda), now-retired federal judge Sharon (Candice Bergen), and also now-retired power chef Carol (Mary Steenburgen) — decide to fulfill their long-forgotten dream of going to Italy because they’ve just read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Jane Fonda is getting married. Also? Diane really needs to sprinkle her late husband’s ashes. What could go wrong?
Accommodations: Even though the crew spends one night in a rural Italian jail, the rest of the trip is five-star because Vivian keeps booking them at her own swanky hotels, which are somehow filled with other hot, horny 70-year-olds. What more could these four ask for?
Vibe: Kind of like if the two friends from Mamma Mia! made a whole Euro trip out of Sophie’s wedding. Money is no object in the Book Club cinematic universe, so this is the European vacation of your wildest dreams, and our girls are really living it up: They are taking selfies at the Trevi Fountain; they are downing “dua proseccos” at lunch; they are getting invited to a spontaneous masquerade garden party, during which Carol ends up playing the accordion onstage. (She learned during the pandemic.) Despite a nasty luggage theft and that one night in jail, I would argue this trip is the best, because these four are actually really good at handling crises. No one is panicking or blaming one another, and everyone knows how to call their friends out on bullshit without pissing anyone off. Even when they’re in handcuffs, it’s supportive looks and statement sun hats all the way. Now that’s amore!
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
When 40-something roommates–slash–platonic life partners Barb and Star get fired from their beloved Jennifer Convertibles jobs and kicked out of book club, it’s time for a change. They pack up their most vibrant culottes and head for Vista Del Mar, where a friend promises the CVS is open 24 hours a day and the men are in “Tommy Bahama from head to toe.” While their fluffy hair adjusts to the Florida humidity, Barb and Star accidentally get tangled up in an evil plan to sic a horde of deadly mosquitoes on Vista Del Mar and navigate some friendship growing pains with the help of a water spirit named Trish.
Accommodations: Barb and Star manage to get a room at a sublime slice of Florida called the Palm Vista Hotel, where they are greeted with umbrella drinks and a choreographed dance number. Nautical décor abounds, and every piece of furniture is awash in either flamingo pink or pool-chlorine blue. This is frankly the perfect setting in which to have a threesome with Jamie Dornan and take down a diabolical mosquito plot.
Vibe: Barb and Star are two Chatty Cathys who enjoy literally everything, so it’s hard for anything to go all that badly. They even love the razor-sharp shell bracelets they bought at a beachside cart called Pookie McNally’s Trinket Hut. But soon they start lying to each other, and even though Barb is really taking to the hotel’s vast roster of activities — which includes snorkeling, paragliding, banana boating, and a wave pool — she’s guiltily doing them without Star, who’s secretly canoodling with Edgar. Eventually, the girls figure things out — both friendship- and mosquito-wise — with the help of Trish. Some minor hiccups, but I’d say a sublime trip all around. Vista Del Mar for life.
The Fabulous Four (2024)
Have you ever been caught between two friends having a huge falling-out? Imagine that, but over the course of 50 years. That is what happens to Kitty (Sheryl Lee Ralph) and Alice (Megan Mullally), who finagle Lou (Susan Sarandon) into flying to Key West for the second wedding of their friend Marilyn (Bette Midler). Lou, a surgeon who loves cats, Ernest Hemingway, and taking herself seriously, doesn’t talk to Marilyn anymore, but now that Marilyn is widowed, embracing life in Florida, and newly in love, their mutual friends are trying to engineer a reconciliation. Their qualifications? Kitty is a weed farmer with an advanced botany degree, and Alice is a singer who is famous enough to be friends with Michael Bolton and own a closet full of Gucci graphic tees, but not so big that she is ever recognized in the street. (This is the perfect level of fame.) Anyway, the situation in the Keys gets expectedly tense, especially considering Kitty and Alice lied to Lou and told her they were heading to Florida not for Marilyn’s wedding but to help her adopt one of Hemingway’s renowned six-toed cats. All the medical marijuana in Kitty’s backyard can’t cover the healing these four need to do.
Accommodations: The gals stay at Marilyn’s luxurious new Key West mansion free of charge, where the décor is heavy on driftwood, palm trees, and aquatic-animal throw pillows. There’s also a pool, hot tub, sprawling ocean views, and a complex Jacuzzi system controlled by an iPad app that no one knows how to use. They each have their own room, which to me is a necessity for anyone traveling over the age of 25. Despite her misgivings about their host — and her visible disgust at Marilyn’s taste in, well, everything — even Lou can’t complain about the quality of their lodgings.
Vibe: To everyone’s horror, Marilyn is trying her hand at TikTok influencing, and she desperately needs good content. So she has a packed itinerary planned: parasailing, strip clubs, one of those trolley rides that is also a bar on wheels. I came away with a sneaking suspicion this movie was sponsored by Key West’s tourism board, which I mean as a compliment, because … it seems like a great vacation spot? There’s sun, boats, beaches, history (see: Hemingway’s cats; tons of old, creaky pubs), and charming little quirks like chickens roaming around everywhere. Unfortunately for our girls, a decades-long feud between two members of a four-woman friend group is vacation kryptonite, and Marilyn keeps putting her foot in her mouth with Lou, killing the mood. Luckily, Alice and Kitty are doing Nobel Peace Prize–worthy work in conflict mediation, and between their weed-fueled de-escalation tactics and the general appeal of this locale, I am officially jealous of this trip. How much are flights?
This post has been updated.
