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The Banger Sisters
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The Film:
2002 wasn't a good year for chick
flicks. Not that a guy should judge, but it's true: for every My
Big Fat Greek Wedding, there's at least two Divine
Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Those two films are examples
of the two most widely-used chick flick formulae: the problematic wedding,
and the relationship between mother and daughter. In The Banger Sisters,
were offered the third chick flick formula: that "old girls
still got it" and old friends stick together. If they concentrated on
messages like that instead of an inane one --gee, kids, being a bed-hopping
groupie is so cool!-- maybe it would've been another Greek Wedding.
At best, it's just another Ya-Ya.
Goldie Hawn plays Suzette, whose old friend
Lavinia (Susan Sarandon) joined her to become teenage rock star groupies in their youth,
leading to Frank Zappa nicknaming them "The Banger Sisters."
Gee Beavis, heh-heh, were they named "Banger Sisters"
because...? Well, yeah, Butthead, I guess so. Jump ahead a few decades,
where Lavinia has straightened out and lives in upper suburbia with her
loving husband and cute daughters. Suzette, meanwhile, is a has-been
trying to prove she's still got it. After getting fired from her dead-end
job, Suzette decides to visit her old friend for some quick cash.
The resulting story oddly wants us to think
the washed-out Suzette is the "cool" one, while Lavinia is the "beige"
one. The way I see it, ignorance of youth left Suzette
broke and imbecilic, while Lavinia left her troubled youth behind to live
in a nice home with a family of her own. If Lavinia's biggest grievance is that her wardrobe is
"too beige," she's doing extremely well. Yet the film wants us to believe Lavinia
"lost something" from her groupie
youth...ya dig, man? I was left wondering exactly what part of her
forgotten youth, was so important to remember here. The times Lavinia and
Suzette shared together involved bed-hopping and being, quite frankly, a pair of sluts.
These are fond memories...?
The real downer for us guys in
chick flicks like this, is that in order to make this female pairing look "interesting," the men who surround them must be either
bigger losers, or cardboard cutouts in comparison. We soon meet Harry (Geoffrey
Rush) a man Suzette bumps into on her way to Lavinia's, who seems written in only
so Suzette's current status as an
unemployed, middle-aged has-been looks less desperate.
Meanwhile, Lavinia's husband,
Raymond (Robin Thomas) clearly lives an interesting life if he can
afford the house his family lives in, yet is reduced to merely making odd faces when Lavinia mentions her groupie past. You
see, Raymond is supposed to be some sort of cad for not
immediately accepting his wife's prior life as a rock star slut. Yeah, sure; and if Lavinia was
told that Raymond bed-hopped his way through college, she'd be so
understanding about it. Give me a break.
I'm not someone who
believes that women must start shopping for rocking chairs at 50.
However, wisdom and experience should keep anyone at that age from wanting
to act like an immature jackass. It's not like a past life as a
slut makes you "virile" in your senior years. I can only hope that at
50, I would have a life similar to Lavinia's,
happily married with cute kids in a nice home. If she wishes to forget the
mistakes of her youth, good for her. If she was able to escape her smutty
past without social disease, she should consider herself very lucky. If
she's supposed to be more permissive when her daughter makes the same
mistakes, that's just silly.
Written and directed by Bob Dolman in his
first directorial job, Dolman is best known for prior scribe work in films
like Willow and Far and Away. However, it's a singular
episode he penned for the TV sitcom WKRP in
Cincinnati, that is most memorable;
a darkly humorous piece when Herb accidentally paints his daughter's frog Green
Peace pink while painting her room, only to try and cover up the mistake
with a new frog. It's humor like that which is sorely missing in The Banger Sisters. In the end, two
ladies trying to bring back the magic of old times, should've brought
back some of the magic of that pink frog.
---Techtite
The DVD:
Nothing to report. No extras, so I'll cut this review short...
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