Book Club: A good read

Book Club (2018) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, and rather generously, for considerable sexual candor and some profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.18.18

Blend four accomplished actresses with a sharp script — particularly if laden with plenty of arch one-liners — and the results can’t help being delightful.

Sharon (Candice Bergen, left) is reluctant to take the "go for it" encouragement coming
from best friends Carol (Mary Steenbergen, center) and Vivian (Jane Fonda). At the same
time, all three are concerned about the romantic progress — or lack thereof — their
mutual friend Diane might be experiencing.

Such is the case with Book Club, a thoroughly entertaining showcase for stars Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen. The ribald premise invites — and delivers — a relentless stream of mischievously bawdy dialogue and clever double entendres, all courtesy of co-writers Erin Simms and Bill Holderman, the latter also making an accomplished directorial debut.

This film also is a game-changer for Simms, a once-busy actress making an equally noteworthy shift to writer/producer. (She shared behind-the-scenes credit with Holderman on 2015’s adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. This new film is much better.)

Book Club is another welcome entry in the Life Doesn’t End At 50 sub-genre of gentle romantic comedies, following in the recent footsteps of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and The Meddler. Simms and Holderman’s sweet and saucy script takes a perceptive poke at ill-advised expectations, unwarranted social conventions, and the silent resignation with which far too many people accept less than their fair slice of the romantic pie.

Diane (Keaton), recently widowed after 40 years of marriage, is regarded as just this side of a doddering invalid by her two well-meaning but insufferably condescending daughters (Alicia Silverstone and Katie Aselton). Vivian (Fonda), an enormously successful and wealthy hotel owner, has spent her life limiting male contact to short-term affairs with no strings attached.

Sharon (Bergen), a federal court judge, still hasn’t recovered from a decades-old divorce from ex-husband Tom (Ed Begley Jr.), who — twisting the knife even further — has just gotten engaged to a hotsy-totsy babe (Mircea Monroe, as Cheryl) who could be his granddaughter.

Carol (Steenburgen) hasn’t been able to rekindle the incandescent sexual spark that highlighted her 35-year marriage to Bruce (Craig T. Nelson), who has become withdrawn and aimless after his recent retirement.

My Life in Ruins: Ruination

My Life in Ruins (2009) • View trailer for My Life in Ruins
Three stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, and much too harshly, for mild sexual content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.11.09
Buy DVD: My Life in Ruins • Buy Blu-Ray: My Life in Ruins [Blu-ray]


Back in the day — 1969, to be precise — Suzanne Pleshette and Ian McShane starred in If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, a routine albeit reasonably charming saga involving Americans being hauled about on a brisk tour of Europe.

This film could be considered a template for an extremely narrow subset of romantic comedies that focus on a mishmash of folks getting dragged into some activity more or less against their wills, and forced to enjoy the experience despite themselves. Notwithstanding complaints, short tempers, lousy hotel accommodations and other low-key problems, everybody winds up being best friends forever when the curtain finally falls.

Georgia (Nia Vaardalos) spends the first half of My Life in Ruins trying to
persuade the members of her hot and tired tour group to embrace her often
stuffy lectures about Greece's magnificent ruins. It could be argued that
Varsalos and the filmmakers spend just as much time trying to get us to like
their movie ... with roughly the same degree of success.

In their own way, such films are as rigorously formulaic as the disaster flicks of the 1970s, in the sense that you could tabulate the two-dimensional stereotypes in your sleep. Tension is minimal, and threats generally are limited to an "unexpected" health crisis that strikes one of the most beloved characters who has come along for the ride.

And, needless to say, the female lead — invariably at a crossroads in her life — Finds Love After All.

Call it movie comfort food.

All that said, some viewers will be delighted to discover that My Life in Ruins hasn't changed the equation a jot in 40 years. All the elements are in place, starting with the frazzled tour guide who can't get her life together; the only nod to the 21st century is the fact that the primarily American tourists of If It's Tuesday have been transformed into a more politically sensitive — although still as stereotyped — gaggle of folks from all over the world.

Honestly, it feels as if scripter Mike Reiss watched If It's Tuesday half a dozen times, modified the recipe only enough to satisfy plagiarism watchdogs, and hoped for the best.

The result will feel awfully familiar to those who regularly watch movies, and that's a problem. I also could apply the ultimate insult, and suggest that My Life in Ruins looks, sounds and plays like a made-for-TV movie with delusions of grandeur. That's a bit harsh, but it accurately describes director Donald Petrie's by-the-numbers approach to a script he seems to have found rather lackluster.

In short, My Life in Ruins feels like a job: a chore to be undertaken with great reluctance by cast and crew, much like the tour being led by this story's Georgia (Nia Vardalos).

Vardalos' presence in this film also is disappointing, in the sense that My Life in Ruins is such a letdown after the star's much greater success with the vibrant My Big Fat Greek Wedding. A lesson can be learned here: Greek Wedding was far from original itself, but Vardalos and all involved injected so much life and spirit that they made a clichéed story fresh all over again.

No doubt the same could have been done with My Life in Ruins, but nobody seems to be trying.