NEAR-PERFECT HARMONY
Streep rocks in emotional tale
RICKI AND THE FLASH Rating:
Starring: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer, Rick Springfield Directed by: Jonathan Demme
Running time: 100 minutes
It’s a little known rule of physics that every time Meryl Streep cries, an Oscar nomination drops from the boughs of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In Ricki and the Flash, watch as a single tear forms at the corner of Streep’s left eye. See it glisten, goldenly and portentously.
But she deserves it. In her latest role, Streep plays Ricki Rendazzo, a.k.a. Linda Brummell, a California rock chick almost as old as rock itself. She’s clearly talented — she’s got Rick Springfield on lead guitar, for Pete’s sake, plus a bunch of other bona fide musical legends backing her up as “the Flash”, but Ricki isn’t quitting her day job as a cashier at a Whole Foods clone.
That’s because she can’t afford to. When she gets a call from exhusband Pete (Kevin Kline) with news that her daughter Julie is in trouble, she flies to Indianapolis but can’t afford the cab ride from the airport to his home. Hotel accommodation is also beyond her. Fortunately, Pete is the accommodating sort.
Written by Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult), Ricki and the Flash has several true-life connections.
Not least is that Julie is played by Mamie Gummer, Streep’s 32-year-old daughter and one of her four children with longtime husband Don Gummer.
It feels like stunt casting but it works, in part because Gummer owns the role. Julie’s husband has just left her, leaving her suicidally depressed. Ricki, who hasn’t had much to do with her children since leaving the family to pursue dreams of stardom, takes it upon herself to both reconcile with and comfort her daughter.
When Ricki’s two sons (one openly gay, both maternally suspicious) show up for a family dinner, Pete tries to stop the siblings’ sniping by pointing out that the family is “proximal.” As olive branches go it’s pretty bare, but the guy is nothing if not a peacekeeper.
Early reviews of Ricki and the Flash can’t seem to decide whether it’s a great movie or a sappy one. But why not both?
On the one hand, director Jonathan Demme (whose previous non-documentary feature, 2009’s Rachel Getting Married, this one mildly resembles) has assembled a kick-ass cast. In addition to the actual musicians backing Ricki, there are such unlikelies/ unknowns as Ben Platt (bartender Daniel), Sebastian Stan and Nick Westrate as Ricki’s sons, and Audra McDonald (TV’s Private Practice) as Maureen, Pete’s second wife.
On the other, the emotional beats sometimes feel a bit too pat, and a night of pot-smoking by Ricki and Pete dissolves into fits of giggling that had me wondering if maybe the actors had actually inhaled.
And the music is a joy. Demme has always had one foot in the rock world, notably with three films featuring Neil Young. The musical numbers — the film opens and closes with Ricki and her band on stage — are lovingly shot and recorded, and function as more than mere space-filler. Drift Away (a.k.a. I Wanna Get Lost in Your Rock ‘n’ Roll) in particular operates as both soundtrack and dialogue from its opening line: “Day after day I’m more confused ...”
And without giving too much away, this is not a movie in which a lifelong personality suddenly does a 180. Ricki is as Ricki does; by the end of the film the most one can say is that she’s singing the same song in a different key. That’s redemption enough for me.