ALSO SHOWING
Book Club Cert: 15A; Now showing
Post-menopausal women like sex. This amazing piece of information went public a few years ago, I suspect privately people may have known already, and Book Club is Hollywood acknowledging it. It is very womany, good fun with genuine laughs and the spirit is wellintentioned.
Whilst weirdly hackneyed in some respects, it is also enormously gratifying to see a film where the youngest star is all of 62.
Diane (Diane Keaton), Sharon (Candice Bergen), Carol (Mary Steenburgen) and Vivian (Jane Fonda) have been friends for almost half a century. Now in their 60s-ish, they are four different female archetypes/ cliches — each of whom has to confront her current sexuality when Vivian presents the book club with Fifty Shades of Grey.
Diane is widowed but has just met a rich, available, ridey man (Andy Garcia, the cast baby at 62) in highly unlikely circumstances — but she is torn because she is not good at putting herself first. Carol’s husband (Craig T Nelson) has lost his libido; Sharon has retired from sex since her divorce; Vivian gets loads of it and is entirely comfortable with her fear of intimacy — until old flame Don Johnson rocks up.
The character types and story arcs are familiar and predictable but the interactions between the women are good, Steenburgen and Bergen are the most convincing. It is occasionally saucy but it’s not smutty — and whilst it won’t change your life, it is fun.