Ricki and The Flash

Caught the new Meryl Streep movie and found it be more frustrating than entertaining, although there are patches of fun to be had.

Audra McDonald, in her 6 minutes of screen time, does more to flesh out her supporting character than anyone else, save Meryl who's in basically every scene of the film.

So much has been made of Mamie Gummer playing her daughter, but there wasn't nearly as much interaction between the two of them as I thought. I suppose with a title like Ricki and The Flash you can expect Ricki to be the main character, but Gummer's character is the one who drives the plot in the first half of the film. She, along with nearly everyone else, drop out of the film halfway through as a change in location occurs that sends Ricki on her own journey of self-discovery.

There's a lot of music in the film, and Meryl certainly seems to be having a blast performing the numbers, but it felt like the last act was 75% musical performance when the plot should have taken over and propelled the characters to a greater climax.

It seems like Diablo Cody is carrying over many of the themes from her far superior Young Adult. She never seems to settle on the right tone for Ricki either: it's not funny enough to be a real comedy, but it never becomes dramatic enough for the actors to really sink their teeth into anything.

Meryl IS great, and that alone will make this worth seeing, but given the character she created, Ricki deserves so much more.

Haven't seen it yet, but fully agree about the under-the-radar "Young Adult." I thought the screenplay was scary good, and whispered many a truth (aging, gender, going home, narcissism) too seldom spoken in film. And Theron was fearless once again, not asking for our love, sympathy or even respect. It seemed an especially brave premise, and execution, and I doubt it would've been made without Cody's Oscar win for the more traditionally comforting "Juno." I have had high hopes for this film, only because of "Young Adult." I read that Streep's character is a Republican, which again makes the material less predictable and more 2015 honest (we all tend to think cover bands in local joints are hip and cool in ways that serve our comfort zones; trust me, many of them have confederate flags in their man/woman caves.)

This looks so awful. Whatever happened to Jonathan Demme? I haven't seen all of his non-fiction work, but I honestly don't think he's made a decent feature film since Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.

She seemed phony and manipulative to me, actually.

I wish this country had a Michael Haneke or a Francois Ozon who could rescue Streep from these middle-brow dramedies.

I guess this closes the post-Hard to Hold chapter of Rick Springfield's movie career.

I...liked it? A lot? Kind of loved it?

I found it to be really heartfelt and very human.

Streep does pretty great work in this film. If your not seeing it for the film itself, at least see it for her performance...she's basically in every scene, and she's wonderful every second of the film.

In my opinion, the film is MUCH better than what the trailer makes it out to be!

I had high hopes for this -- I, too, was highly impressed by Cody's YOUNG ADULT and what she was able to do with that character/story -- but this ended up being one of the worst films I've seen in recent memory. It manages to be too short to fully set anything up and also feel endless. It's a march of cliches, and the only thing that's not a cliche -- that Ricki, an artistic Californian, is also a hardcore Tea Party republican -- barely gets addressed. Kevin Kline sleepwalks through his part; I've expended more emotion ordering a latte than he gives at any point in the film. And Mamie Gummer is little more than loud.

Audra gives a pretty good performance in a thankless role, and a role that she's really too young for. The film suggests that Pete and Maureen have been married for a long time -- 20+ years -- are we supposed to believe that they married when Maureen was twenty?

I found “Juno” so thoroughly wretched that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch another Diablo (I LITERALLY can’t even type her name without rolling my eyes) Cody-penned movie since then. Meryl and only Meryl might get me to check this out at some point.

I think mostly every single line of dialogue. Oh, my blog, homeskillet.

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I found “Juno” so thoroughly wretched that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch another Diablo (I LITERALLY can’t even type her name without rolling my eyes) Cody-penned movie since then. Meryl and only Meryl might get me to check this out at some point."

With you 100% on this.

Finally saw it today. To me, it's just a feel good movie, set up thus, and able to deliver (enough) for a large number of people. In no small part due to the cast and some good (enough) covers of classic rock. As Whizzer and others have noted, Cody disappoints on a scene by scene basis, the oddly generic dialog rarely on par with her other films, though she manages to crank up a decent fresh take on the now boilerplate uh-oh-she's-babbling-instead-of-singing-on-stage ick moment (See NASHVILLE, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER) . That moment here, about an hour in, grounds the movie's thesis, such as it is, in legit feminist slant on the pile-on of disgust toward this woman for leaving her family. I welcomed it, and predictably Streep makes it the centerpiece of her character.. Demme recycles the same style of wedding he did more daringly before, but the movie arrives at its destination, with (enough) pleasure to be had along the way. The actors are all invested, and you have to hand it to Streep: she doesn't phone this in. Every second of screen time is devoted to filling in this character, making her palpably real, not a "Streep cover" of such a woman. I was moved by how hard she works. I wish I could say something positive about Gummer's presence, but I'll just say: it didn't bother me that she checked out of the story midway.

Updated On: 8/15/15 at 08:57 PM