BOOK CLUB (12A)
LET’S talk about sexagenarians.
Writer-director Bill Holderman’s frothy romantic comedy stars Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen as life-long friends, who have forgotten what it means to grow old disgracefully.
One leaf through the pages of E L James’s erotic thriller Fifty Shades Of Grey, the chosen text for a monthly book club, and these likeable heroines are enjoying first-date sex on the back seat of a car, slipping Viagra pills into a spouse’s beer and inadvertently grabbing the crotch of an adjacent passenger on a commercial flight.
It’s hard to believe that one of the characters in the film wouldn’t have secretly read the bestseller in that period but Holderman’s film, which is co-written by Erin Simms, doesn’t tarry on matters of likelihood or logic.
Not when contrivances and coincidences can be piled one atop another to provide the four leading ladies with predictable subplots that ensure they all reach the end credits with willing suitors and a sheen of contentment.
They are far better than Holderman’s picture deserves.