Initially, I had no intention of watching this. After some consideration and getting the opportunity to seeing this early, I decided to check it out. To my surprise, it made the time watching it quite valuable. It offers a realistic look at what friendship means through both the highs and the lows.

Off the bat, what makes the movie work so well is how committed it is through its high and lows points of the story. Thanks to the help of lead actress, Yara Shahidi, she navigates the story with the emotion that the film needs to resonate with its audience. Whether the film is light-hearted or serious, the film never skips a beat in tone.

The film also never lacks from a technical perspective. The cinematography captures each scene with great attention to detail and the editing never makes the film eager to jump from scene to scene. The direction is also quite effective with establishing the right tone and having the talent in front of the camera fully embrace it authentically.

On a personal level, I could relate to the second half of the story. I don’t want to give too much away, but I had a friend of mine that was integral to where I am now. Even though the tone changes drastically, I think it will give viewers solitude to see a film portray what friendship can do to someone’s confidence and contribute to where they are today.

At almost two hours, it can feel quite long at times. So much happens throughout that it may have worked better as a miniseries. While the first half is devoted to establishing a fun atmosphere, the second half becomes quite bleak, leading to a much darker part of the story that tends to forget what the first half was all about. It’s not all bad though. It does manage to direct itself to its point in the end, but I couldn’t help but to think that maybe if it was split up into different parts, it would have been a lot more effective between the characters and the overall themes it wants to coney.

Overall, Sitting in Bars with Cake is worth your time when it comes out later this week on Prime Video. I am unsure if I’d watch this again, but I do believe that people will find enough value in this to see it for what it is – a fun, yet somber & realistic look at what friendship means. Even at a long runtime, you could do a lot worse.

VERDICT: 3.5/5 (Pretty Good)