Sitting In Bars With Cake -

This was a rough time for me to watch Sitting in Bars with Cake. The story starts off as a bestie-comedy about Jane (Yara Shahidi) and Corinne (Odessa A’zion). In classic style, Jane is the socially awkward one, with the traditional family*, while Corinne is the wild child daughter of quirky common folk. Corinne wants Jane to go “outside” and meet men, but Jane only wants to bake the best goodies. The wild one, of course, makes things happen and their year of taking elaborately wonderful cakes into bars to meet men begins. But the story has more than ‘cakebarring’ in mind, Corinne receives a shattering diagnosis and similar to Beaches (1988), Sitting in Bars with Cake examines friendship when life itself is on the line.

Written by Audrey Shulman, based on her cookbook—which is based on her true-to-life season of cakebarring with her roommate, Chrissy—and directed by Trish Sie: Sitting in Bars with Cake is soft, and sad, and salty-sweet in its sentiment. The performances are solid throughout and for reasons I didn’t realize until now, it reminds me of Boys on the Side (1995). The friendship between Jane and Corinne feels a lot like Jane (Whoopi Goldberg) and Robin (Mary-Louise Parker), but with their personalities reversed. Beyond the Janes and its obvious thematic connection, SIBWC has a lot of the same 90s sensibilities: perfectly imperfect women, men as side dishes, friendships that are drenched in laughter and fractured by pain, the clothes, and somehow the music too—seriously go watch both trailers. And yet it all comes back to that examination of friendship when life itself is on the line.

That’s the part that caught me in a rough place. When you’re sitting beside a phenomenal woman’s bedside, intermittently laughing and swiping away tears, while holding her hand because of a diagnosis, Sitting in Bars with Cake is either the worst or the best movie to watch. Which means it does what it set out to do.

^{* shoutout to casting director Barbara J. McCarthy for bringing in actors}
^{Adina Porter and Navid Negahban to reflect Yara’s actual parents.}