September 20, 2002 | OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one: A free spirit flits back into the life of a long-lost friend, eager to reminisce about their shared past, only to find the former soul mate is an uptight straight-arrow in desperate need of…
Oh. You have heard it before. Like, maybe dozens of times? Well, here it is again, with a slightly different spin: In The Banger Sisters, girls, not boys, are the ones who just want to have fun.
Goldie Hawn is perfectly cast as Suzette, a foul-mouthed, fiftysomething sprite who still wants to party like it’s 1969. Way back during the Age of Aquarius, Suzette and best buddy Vinnie (Susan Sarandon) earned the nicknames that give the movie its title as uber-groupies who slept with just about every major rock star, and most of the minor musical luminaries, in Greater Los Angeles. More than three decades later, Suzette remains unabashedly proud of her legendary high jinks. (Give her half a chance, and she’ll lovingly describe how she was found one night under an unconscious Jim Morrison in a nightclub bathroom.) But Vinnie has changed her ways — indeed, she’s even changed her name back to Lavinia — to become an ultra-respectable wife and mother in suburban Phoenix.
The last thing Lavinia wants is a blast from the past. Which, of course, is precisely what she gets when Suzette, newly fired from her long-time job as bartender at L.A.’s Whiskey A Go-Go, breezes into town in search of financial assistance and moral support.
Written and directed in plodding sitcom style by Bob Dolman, Banger Sisters is so thoroughly predictable that, once you glean the premise from the coming-attractions trailer, you’ll likely be three or four steps ahead of the plot before you drive into the megaplex parking lot, and never fall behind during the movie itself.
Yes, Lavinia is a demanding, control-freakish mother to her two teen-age daughters. You guessed it: Suzette inspires her erstwhile sister groupie to reappraise her uptight ways. And, of course, Lavinia’s bland husband (Robin Thomas) and mildly rebellious daughters — a stressed-for-success honor student played by Erika Christensen (Traffic) and a spoiled brat overplayed by Eva Amurri (Sarandon’s real-life daughter) — can’t believe the straight-laced Lavinia ever walked (and slept) on the wild side.
That is, they can’t believe it until Suzette and Lavinia cap off a night of hearty partying by getting stoned and viewing cherished photos of their past conquests’ private parts. I don’t have to tell you who unexpectedly walks in while they’re giggling over the snapshots, do I?
The Banger Sisters might have worked better if Dolman took a few chances, and played against the expectations inevitably raised by such a familiar plot. What if Suzette weren’t such a lovably daffy cutie-pie? What if she were pathetically delusional, or genuinely psychotic, while smashing her way back into Vinnie’s new life?
As it stands, the movie is worth seeing only to savor Hawn’s self-mocking ebullience as a character who comes off as a grown-older version of the sexy kooks she played three decades ago. In unfortunately sharp contrast, Sarandon appears exceedingly uncomfortable as Vinnie, even when the character is supposed to be loosening up. You can’t help suspecting that she’s reflexively reacting against the phony-baloney machinations of a movie in which characters are arbitrarily pushed around by the dictates of the plot, and not driven by their own passions or desires.
