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The story line has definite potential—two groupies reunite
and cope with their changed/unchanged personalities after
30-plus years apart. Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn
team up on screen for the first time. Both are high-caliber
actresses, each having their own heydays, Goldie Hawn in the
’80s and Susan Sarandon in the ’90s. Geoffrey Rush,
who made his Hollywood debut in Shine (1996), always
imbues his characters with an appropriate mixture of menace,
tenderness and comedy. The presence of writer-director Bob
Dolman, who penned the successful movies Willow
and Far And Away, leads one to believe this script
should be equally as good. All of the ingredients seem like
a recipe for success, right?
Wrong! The Hollywood movie-making machine churns out another
faulty clunker that sputters its way from start to finish.
What this movie should have been was a low-budget, gritty
reunion of friends, but it played out like a bloated, caramelized
episode of “Three’s Company.”
Goldie Hawn, sporting a bad, in-and-out Janis Joplin
rasp, plays Suzette, a down on her luck bartender stuck in
the past, who seeks out her old fellow “band-aid,” Lavinia
(Sarandon). Lavinia over the years has transformed into a
straight-laced PTA mom. While on the road, Suzette picks up
Harry (Rush, who plays a caricature of a hypochondriac that
is annoyingly uninteresting).
There are brief moments in the movie that just didn’t fit
the pristine, Disney-like quality of the film. These scenes,
if elaborated, would have made a better movie. One scene where
Lavinia and Suzette smoke up and start looking through their
old collection of the penis photos they took of all the rock
stars they banged was genius. But it still lacked any of the
edge or bite needed to really work. Don’t waste your money
on this one.
—Jennifer Prestigiacomo
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