Ricki and the Flash

Overview

She’s been everyone from a magazine editor in The Devil Wears Prada to Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, and now she’s an aspiring musician. She’s the inimitable, ever-chameleonic Meryl Streep, of course, and in Ricki and the Flash, she’s channelling her inner rock goddess. She’s also belting out everything from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 'American Girl' to Lady Gaga’s 'Bad Romance'. And yes, she's actually playing the guitar and singing the tunes herself.

As the titular character, Streep plays a wannabe past the point where wanting to be something else is acceptable. With her band — including guitarist and lover Greg (Rick Springfield) — she gigs at a San Fernando Valley pub by night; to make ends meet, she works as a supermarket checkout operator by day. Ricki has been chasing her calling for sometime now but shows no signs of hitting it big. Then a phone call from her ex-husband, Pete (Kevin Kline), thrusts her out of her dreams and back to the children — about-to-be-divorced Julie (Mamie Gummer, Streep’s real-life daughter), and sons Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate) — she left behind years ago.

Returning home and receiving something less than a warm welcome isn’t an uncommon movie narrative, or an uncommon movie-of-the-week one either. While Ricki and the Flash explores family problems from the female perspective, as well as attempting to shine a light on the judgments imposed on women who want to be something other than mothers and homemakers, there’s never any doubt that it covers well-worn territory.

Writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) and director Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married) have much to do with the fact that the feature that results still offers an all-round pleasant viewing experience, with the script engaging despite its obviousness, and the film a well-framed, highly polished affair that suits its jukebox soundtrack of old hits. That said, that the movie always seems so nice and gentle — and absent any sense of edginess, other than Streep's half-braided hairstyle and black-heavy wardrobe — sometimes feels a bit out of place given its rock 'n' roll packaging.

What she's wearing is the least impressive aspect of the star's performance, though, with her Ricki as convincing in her unattained desires as she is in her barely expressed regrets. Streep is not the film's only highlight, however. Gummer does much more than just convey her natural rapport with her mother, and Kline is as wanted a presence as ever on screen as the figure trying to reunite them.

Together, they're as amiable as performers playing with a feel-good story steeped in several levels of cookie-cutter dysfunction can be. So is the likeable end product that is Ricki and the Flash itself, even if it doesn't amount to much more than its music and its cast — and even if Springfield doesn't sing his '80s classic 'Jessie's Girl'.