Sitting in Bars with Cake review: Tearjerker will win you over

In Sitting in Bars with Cake, Corinne convinces her best friend Jane to take cakes to parties in order to socialise with the men. The comedy-drama film is now streaming on Prime Video.

Story

Jane (Yara Shahidi) is socially awkward and struggles to strike up conversations at parties. This changes when she brings cake to a bar and the men talk to her about it.

Corinne (Odessa A’zion) notices this and encourages Jane to take a cake to a bar every week. They call it ‘cake barring’ and the adventure begins.

Jane experiences success with this strategy. However, they are both left shocked when Corinne suffers a seizure and the doctors tell her she has cancer.

Corinne begins her chemotherapy while Jane continues the cake barring. But the deteriorating health of her best friend takes a toll on Jane.

Performances

Both Yara and Odessa portray their roles excellently. The film largely revolves around the two main characters and they show great chemistry.

The characters have opposite personalities, but the two actors are extremely convincing. They don’t give you a chance to complain.

Positives

The twist of Corinne being diagnosed with cancer completely flips the narrative from what feels like a harmless comedy film to a full-fledged drama.

Director Trish Sie manages to tug at the viewers’ heartstrings with the bond that Corinne and Jane share. You can tell how much they mean to each other.

This makes Corinne’s declining health hit even harder. It feels inevitable that the two will part ways but the impact doesn’t lower one bit.

Negatives

The whole cakebarring aspect of the film takes a backseat after Corrine’s health issues are revealed and feels forgotten.

For a film named ‘Sitting in Bars with Cake’ there is a dearth of cakes and bars for the majority of its runtime. Instead, Jane and Corinne’s relationship is the most interesting element of the film.

Verdict

It’s hard to hold back tears by the end of Sitting in Bars with Cake. It takes you on an emotional journey of two drastically different best friends who have nothing but love for each other.

If only it could have made more sense of the bringing cakes to bars part.

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