Ricki and The Flash

Ricki and The Flash casts Meryl Streep as the title character, an aging rocker who is forced to confront her past after her daughter (Mamie Gummer’s Julie) experiences a mental breakdown – with the film detailing Ricki’s ongoing efforts at repairing her broken relationship with her daughter. It’s almost astonishing just how generic and by-the-numbers Ricki and The Flash eventually reveals itself to be, as Diablo Cody’s screenplay, for the most part, incorporates the most obvious and familiar tropes one could possibly imagine into the cookie-cutter narrative. The film, then, staves off total worthlessness thanks to its effective performances and smattering of electric musical numbers, with, in terms of the latter, Streep’s surprisingly strong singing voice elevating the many songs that appear throughout the film. (It’s interesting to note that the movie doubles down on the rock-band stuff as it progresses, as though director Jonathan Demme became more and more aware of the screenplay’s worthlessness.) There’s little doubt, too, that Ricki and The Flash benefits from the inclusion of a few admittedly engaging sequences, with the best and most obvious example of this a loose, amusing scene in which Ricki, her daughter, and ex-husband (Kevin Kline, stealing scenes with aplomb) get high and bond. The big emotional revelations of the movie’s final stretch fall flat, obviously, and it is, in the end, difficult to see what drew Demme to this hopelessly hackneyed material.

**1/2 out of ****