Film Review - Book Club (12A)

We are NOT reading this book.

Diane Keaton. Jane Fonda. Candice Bergen. Mary Steenburgen. Four magnificent actresses, whose combined careers span just shy of two hundred years (I went to imdb.com and did the mathematics). Any one of these women should be a delight to watch on screen and from the ensemble you'd expect a scintillating comedy-drama experience. It saddens me then to report that their efforts have resulted in a film as drab and pedestrian as Book Club. And considering that the movie is all about revving up your life, that's just a tad ironic. 

The quartet play longterm friends and members of the eponymous club, whose love-lives are shaken up when Vivian (Fonda) introduces the others to Fifty Shades of Grey (the entire damn trilogy) as their new read. Each of these professionally successful women is allotted a swiftly defined role by the screenplay. Keaton is recently widowed and not planning on any immediate romantic entanglements. Bergen is divorced and focusing on her work to the exclusion of all else. Steenburgen, while happily married, longs for the spark of passion to return. And Fonda herself is the eternally, enthusiastically single gal, eschewing commitment in favour of casual flings. All four find themselves shaken up by the venture into erotic literature, with varied and - um - hilarious consequences. 

Look - here at Filmic Forays it's all about keeping an open mind. I made an effort to sideline any instinctive prejudice regarding the movie's glaring product placement of the Grey novels. The Fifty Shades series is a bona fide cultural phenomenon after all, and it's perfectly legitimate to explore the books' effect on modern women through screen drama. Plus with vintage Hollywood guys resuscitating their flagging libidos in movies like Last Vegas and The Bucket List, it's only fair that their female counterparts get to do the same. But it would be good to see them do so with real daring and comedic bite, rather than in something as insipid as this.

The film is resolutely mainstream from its start to its pat and overtly soppy end, with broad characterisations and plot-development-by-numbers. What promised to be an audacious exploration of older female sexuality is in actual fact a bog-standard romcom with a lot of lame innuendo strewn along the way. These four supposedly literate and fiercely intelligent protagonists are given nothing to prove their credentials in dialogue that seldom rises above the bland, forcing the question 'What the hell were they reading, before they discovered E. L. James?' Oh, and 'Why do they scarcely allude to any of these other books?'

Let me stress - the movie's deficiencies owe precisely nothing to its leads, all of whom strive valiantly to shape smart, entertaining personalities out of the drab source material. Their believability as lifelong companions almost acts as a saving grace, while as individuals they produce some hard-earned character moments. (Bergen is droll, Keaton even achieves 'touching' at one point.) The guys put in nice work too; Andy Garcia is suave as Keaton's love-interest, Craig T. Nelson a likeable curmudgeon as Steenburgen's husband. But if a mediocre actor can be buoyed up by good writing, here it's the reverse - a formidable cast breathing all the life they can into a dying script. 

I know, I know - I'm not part of the target audience, but I do have the capacity to look past genre and acknowledge a job well done, when it's well done. Tully wasn't made with me in mind, nor was A Bad Moms Christmas, but to varying extents I enjoyed both. By the same token, Book Club falls short - not because of the subject-matter, but due to the lameness with which its dealt. And that, with the riches of talent on board, is a true shame. 

Gut Reaction: A few smirks (I'm as vulnerable to a 'pussy' pun as anyone) and a few cringes. But mostly a sense of time passing really slowly.

Where Are the Women?: They're here and they're great, but they're all terribly ill-served.

Ed's Verdict: 4/10. I truly hoped to be nicer, but honesty overrules. Dull and predictable, and a wasted opportunity to give great actresses something truly subversive and fun.