Review: Awkwafina, Sandra Oh star in comedy Quiz Lady on Disney+

M, 99 minutes. Disney+

3 stars

Quiz Lady has enough broad jokes to be lightly enjoyed by just about anyone.

But the people who have spent many a night watching the late, great Alex Trebek soothingly deliver just-hard-enough questions on Jeopardy are the true audience for this streaming comedy.

There are so many knowing winks to the long-running quiz show Jeopardy - which is never expressly mentioned in the film - that it's impossible not to be impressed.

The film, from writer Jen D'Angelo (Totally Killer, Hocus Pocus 2) and director Jessica Yu (13 Reasons Why, In Treatment), follows a pair of sisters who couldn't be more different.

Awkwafina plays Anne, a quiz-show obsessed accountant who loves nothing more than curling up with her beloved pug Mr Linguini of a night and existing in the world quietly and without fuss. Sandra Oh, meanwhile, plays Anne's chaos rainbow of an older sister, Jenny, who has a new life calling every five minutes, several schemes on the go and an utter repulsion of routine and stability.

The pair, who are not close, are thrown back together after their gambling-addict mother runs away from her nursing home to live in Macau with her new boyfriend. But she doesn't just leave her family behind - she also owes tens of thousands of dollars to the Asian mafia, and they're coming to her daughters to collect.

With Mr Linguini dognapped as collateral, Anne must figure out a way to make a lot of money fast - a feat made significantly easier by her newfound social media fame. After Jenny secretly records Anne rattling off every answer while watching her favourite trivia show, Can't Stop the Quiz, she's dubbed "Quiz Lady" by the internet, and invited to go on the program - and attempt to unseat the reigning, over-smiling champion played by Jason Schwartzman.

Aside from the fact that Quiz Lady vastly overestimates the public interest in people correctly answering TV questions (in what world would a video of that ever go viral?), the film comfortably follows the paint-by-numbers formula you'd expect to deliver an experience with little to no surprises.

Some of the humour is very obvious and overdone, and while Oh delivers a committed performance, there's no escaping the fact that her character is hugely grating. But Awkwafina's Anne is likeable and understated, and she delivers another commendable performance. Will Ferrell is also quite joyful to watch as the Trebek-esque host of Can't Stop the Quiz, Terry McTeer. There's a scene toward the end of the film where we see a hallway with walls filled floor to ceiling with every bowtie Terry has worn on the program over 20-odd years, and both Ferrell's performance and the scene itself are sweet and lovely. Terry is written perfectly, from his even-toned vocal delivery to his pleasant and ultimately boring chatter with the contestants.

Sometimes the film tries too hard to be funny, wringing out jokes for all they're worth - a hallucinogen-fuelled quiz audition is a particular culprit of this - and going for cheap laughs. But some moments are unquestionably funny, and some are sweet.

A few choice side characters add nice colour, including Anne's curmudgeonly neighbour Francine (Holland Taylor from Two and a Half Men) - who swears Alan Cumming from The Good Wife is her favourite actor, but mistakenly collects Paul Reubens merchandise - and "Ben Franklin", manager of the historically-themed Philadelphia bed and breakfast where the sisters stay, played by Tony Hale (Veep).

Quiz Lady is not going to be a film for the ages, and you're probably not going to recommend it to your friends as a must-watch, but if you enjoy Jeopardy and have an hour-and-a-half to kill, you're not going to regret spending it on this comedy.