For
anyone curious about the fate of band-aid Penny Lane and her free-spirited
companions, who were aboard rock band Stillwater’s 1975 Almost Famous
tour in Cameron Crowe’s ode to rock n’ roll, director Bob Dolman’s debut
offers an entertaining take on aging groupies adjusting to an era of
responsibility and chores; quite different from hippie standards of free-love
and consumption of mind-altering substances. In the pairing of Goldie Hawn and
Susan Sarandon as best friends, the former as Suzette, a middle-aged woman who
refuses to abandon her immature values, and the latter as Lavinia, a middle-aged
woman who has cultivated the suburban lifestyle, The Banger Sisters feels
like a private high-school reunion between two women. Not that the iconic
actresses have worked together before, they haven’t, but their résumé and
backgrounds are so similar, the chemistry rivals that of Sarandon and Geena
Davis’ in Thelma & Louise.
As
teens, Vinnie and Suzette were inseparable from each other and rock stars. The
two had slept with everyone from Jim Morrison to Frank Zappa – who gave them
the moniker of “The Banger Sisters”. But after the death of rock n’ roll
in the early 70’s, both friends separated, each taking different lifestyle
routes.
Vinnie is now the strict mother of two high-school girls
(Erika Christensen and Eva Amurri, respectively) and a pillar to her upper-class
Phoenix community. Suzette, on the other hand, has not changed one bit; even
though her environment has. After Suzette is fired from her bartending gig, she
decides to drive to Phoenix and borrow some money from her childhood friend, who
she hasn’t seen in 20-years. Instead of receiving the loan, Suzette rekindles
a bond two decades in the making.
GRADE: B
-Copyright 2002
Shaun
Sages