The Banger Sisters **½ (2002, Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn, Geoffrey Rush) – Classic Movie Review 2013

Writer-director Rob Dolman’s 2002 nostalgic comedy drama has welcome stars in Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon as rock groupies Suzette and Vinnie (now known as the serious-minded Lavinia Kingsley), who reconnect after 25 years and go back on the road to get in touch with their joyful young selves.

Sarandon’s character is supposed to be married and to have got boring and joyless as a conservative housewife until Hawn’s scatty-as-ever Suzette, a fiftysomething who loses her job as a bartender, turns up at her home to free her from a life of drudgery and reconnect with the flower power spirit of her youth.

Even if the comedy and drama in the movie, which plays like a comedy version of Sarandon’s movie Thelma & Louise, are often clichéd and unconvincing, the stars are class acts and Hawn’s appealing turn, especially, saves it. Unfortunately, the normally excellent Geoffrey Rush is a bit embarrassing and stagey as Harry Plummer, a nervous, lonely drifter writer they duo pick up along the way, who says he is going home to confront his father. And the roles for the other actors, including Erika Christensen, Robin Thomas, Eva Amurri, Matthew Carey, Andre Ware, Adam Tomei and Sal Lopez, offer slim pickings.

By 2014, The Banger Sisters is the most recent film of Goldie Hawn. It is a low-budget movie at a $10million cost and was nicely in profit in America alone, taking $30million there.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 2013

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