And it is thus that Michelle will restore her former fortune. Discovering as well that Claire has a killer brownie recipe, Michelle reinvents herself as the authoritarian leader of Darnell's Darlings, an empire of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls selling brownies throughout Chicago (a city where it frankly makes no sense to set any part of this narrative, but McCarthy's from there, and it results in some great location shooting). Reduced to destitution, a post-prison Michelle has nowhere to stay but Claire's couch, and it's from here that she discovers the world of girl scout cookies (but not, in a no-doubt legally-mandated dodge, "Girl Scout" cookies), thanks to Claire's daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson).
Then she's nabbed by the federal government for insider trading. The film's hook - calling it a "plot" would be a kindness - is that a certain Michelle Darnell (McCarthy), the 47th-wealthiest woman in America (this says more about me than the movie, but it was that "47th" that made me start to feel good about where things were going: extreme specificity is an underrated source of strength in comedy writing), is an abusive, vulgar tyrant, who treats her long-suffering assistant Claire (Kristen Bell) with extra contempt on top of what she doles out to everyone else. This is obviously a viciously narrow way to praise a film, but comedy is a tricky beast to get a handle on. Or to put it another way, I laughed, and I laughed often enough to conclude that it was a worthwhile comedy, however many borderline-crippling flaws it has here, there, and most places. Melissa McCarthy is actually great in it, however, and that provides enough cover for the film as a whole to achieve some kind of simulation of goodness.
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