Ricki and the Flash

There is a yearning which I develop over the long summer season of bombastic super hero flicks for more movies for mature adults. Unfortunately, this one does not fit the bill despite the presence of a group of Academy Award winners behind this project (Jonathan Demme, Diablo Cody, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline) The script fails in its job to produce characters and situations other than those that are utterly contrived. Then the movie reaches its low point and final cop-out with a heavily sugar-coated, feel-good finale created to induce a sudden spike in cases of hyperglycemia. But for Meryl Streep shredding her Fender guitar while belting out tunes by Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen in a throaty, cigarette smoke, whisky-swilled voice, the film would be tone deaf. Streep can do anything, it appears. She is so eerily talented; that back in the Middle Ages she might've been burned at the stake as a witch.