Review: Ricki and the Flash

Disjointed and diffuse, slight and strained, clichéd and contrived, Ricki and the Flash is a film of too many frequently competing elements, none of which are fully fleshed out enough to gain even a tiny bit of traction.

Meryl Streep plays Ricki Rendazzo, a.k.a. Linda Brummell, once a full-time wife and mother and now a sixtysomething frontwoman of The Flash, a popular local band that covers the likes of Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Pink, and Lady Gaga. The movie itself often plays like a cover version of screenwriter Diablo Cody's Young Adult and director Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married, diluting those film's thornier elements for a palatable but inconsequential look at a flawed and selfish protagonist forced to confront the choices she has made before the closing credits roll.

The movie wastes little time in showing viewers Ricki in all her uneven glory. After a rousing performance of Tom Petty's "American Girl," Ricki eases into some awkward stage banter, displaying her Republican streak and arguing with guitarist Greg (Rick Springfield) about the true nature of their relationship. She later apologises by reasoning the onstage tension is what the crowd wants - isn't romantic conflict what made Fleetwood Mac so famous and popular?

Though she has historically stayed away from the family she left behind all those years ago, Ricki decides to return to Indianapolis after taking an urgent call from ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline). Their daughter Julie (Streep's real-life daughter Mamie Gummer) is in a downward spiral after having been dumped by her husband for another woman. Indeed Julie is a sight - unwashed and sporting the most remarkable next of matted and untangled hair - a woman unhinged and oblivious to most everything but her own suffering. She is not particularly welcoming of Linda, pointedly refusing to address her by either her stage name or "Mother," and delivers a withering assessment of her mother's leather get-up: "Do you have a gig tonight or do you always dress like a hooker from Night Court?"

Ricki receives more of the same from her sons. Older son Josh (Sebastian Stan) is forgiving, but has kept her in the dark about his upcoming wedding to the humourless Emily (Hailey Gates). Younger son Adam (Nick Westrate), meanwhile, rails into her for her narrowmindedness of his homosexuality and, when Ricki admonishes him for calling Julie an attention-seeking psycho, sarcastically praises Ricki for her parenting skills. Of course, Ricki will make up for lost time and naturally Pete's feelings for his ex-wife will resurface, the latter situation abetted by some refrigerated marijuana. Sophie's Choice co-stars Streep and Kline play the moment beautifully, encapsulating their characters' history of love and loss with an economy of gesture and expression conveying a surfeit of feeling.

With the exception of that scene and Ricki's confrontation with Maureen (Audra McDonald), the woman who has supplanted her as wife and mother, Ricki and the Flash seems allergic to delving into any sort of complication. Family dysfunction abounds yet one would never know it as it's cloaked under so much politeness.

"Mick Jagger had seven kids with four different women," Ricki announces in between songs, "he didn't actually raise them but...Daddy can do whatever Daddy wants." It's a fine piece of writing that questions the double standard that allows men to more easily shed family responsibilities. Yet the dialogue is as disconnected as most everything else in this film. It does not shed any light on either Ricki's motivations or even the repercussions experienced by all involved except in the most superficial of ways.

Were it not for the redoubtable Streep and the strong supporting work from Kline, Gummer and McDonald, Ricki and the Flash would be barely watchable.

Ricki and the Flash

Directed by: Jonathan Demme

Written by: Diablo Cody

Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer, Rick Springfield, Audra McDonald, Sebastian Stan, Nick Westrate, Hailey Gates, Bill Irwin