MERYL KEEPS ROCKIN’
Ricki and the Flash lets Meryl Streep show her musical chops,
Ricki and the Flash
(out of 4) Starring Meryl Streep, Rick Springfield, Kevin Kline and Mamie Gummer. Directed by Jonathan Demme. At GTA theatres. 100 minutes. Jonathan Demme is so good at reinventing the concert movie, working with the likes of Neil Young and Talking Heads, it would be fun to see him make a real show out of Ricki and the Flash.
With Meryl Streep enthusiastically grabbing the mic and jangling the guitar as the title Ricki, and real rocker Rick Springfield and several studio aces backing her as the Flash (including the recently departed Rick Rosas, Young’s bass player), this could have been more than the fitful melodrama it becomes.
Demme seems beset by conflicting intentions, especially since Streep is no pretender — she’s proven her musical chops in many movies. Would he rather be filming another Stop Making Sense or another Rachel Getting Married?
He lets the camera linger on moments like the opening cover of Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” wherein Streep and Springfield establish their great chemistry together, even though their characters Ricki and Greg can’t quite find the beat as offstage lovers. She calls it “banter,” he calls it romance.
Then things get soapy, as Demme and screenwriter Diablo Cody shift into an entire season’s worth of daytime drama clichés.
Ricki, known as Linda in her previous life, has more psychic baggage than she does braids, bangles and tattoos, having long ago forsaken the mommy track for the rock ’n’ roll highway.
She left behind in Indianapolis a disgruntled ex-husband (Kevin Kline), two estranged sons (Sebastian Stan and Nick Westrate) and a furious daughter (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real daughter).
And what does Ricki have to show for it? An album that sold in double digits, a part-time job checking groceries at a health food store and regular gigs at a Tarzana, Calif., bar where the glazed regulars demand covers of songs by Lady Gaga and Pink as well as Petty and Bruce Springsteen.
A failed suicide attempt by her daughter, Julie, prompts an emergency family reunification in Indianapolis, wherein ex-hubby Pete and his equally Squaresville wife Maureen (Audra McDonald) will gang up to judge Ricki, unless she can somehow change the tune.
The script by Diablo Cody doesn’t make the best use of the Juno scribe’s trademark snark. For every zinger that hits — Ricki acidly observes that Mick Jagger fathered seven children from four women, and nobody questions his parenting skills — there are several that clang like a mangled chord.
Julie’s fury isn’t given much context. There are no flashbacks of, say, the time mom skipped out on her daughter’s piano recital so she could open for Melissa Etheridge.
Kline fares better as the torch-carrying Pete, who can’t even get the family poodle to respect him. First teamed with Streep in Sophie’s Choice, so long ago, he wins empathy as a guy wondering why he’s wandering around in a cardigan while his ex-wife is out looking for adventure, and whatever else comes her way.
The most felicitous pairing, though, is between Streep and Springfield, especially when they’re on stage making music. It’s where they and Demme really want to be, and their abundant harmony makes Ricki and the Flash worth watching, and rocking to.