FilmSnobReviews

Title: Ricki and the Flash
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Streep, Kevin Kline, Mamie Gummer
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
What It Is: Ricki (Streep) is a woman following her dreams of being in a rock band. The only problem is she left her life as Linda who lives in Indiana with a husband and three kids to do it. Now as her daughter (Streep real life daughter Gummer) deals with an impending divorce her ex-husband (Kline) calls Linda in to help her slowly mentally sinking offspring. As one child’s marriage dissolves another one, in this case, her son Josh (Sebastian Stan) is the one getting married. Will Ricki be invited, or will her own selfish nature stop her from attending her son’s nuptials or even helping her daughter cope?

What We ThinkL: As a whole the film is fair to midland, and as usual Streep kills it. From an acting perspective, the film was very strong. What let me down was the writing. Its script was penned by former Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody. This didn’t have the freshness that a lot of her scripts do. It seemed bland and at some points tended to wander. One huge positive was the music. I love music and most of the stuff here was well-known tracks sung by Streep, who is a trained singer.

Our Grade: C+, I can recommend you see this film as it is pretty good, but it is nowhere near the years best. I’m going to see Suffragette soon so after that this won’t even be the best Streep performance I anticipate. Diablo Cody hasn’t let me down like this since Jennifer’s Body, but even that had the signature charm despite being an atrocious film. If you are a die-hard Streep fan, and why wouldn’t you be, this is one to check out!