Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) directs Oscar-winner Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady, Sophie’s Choice, Kramer vs. Kramer) in a script by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody (Juno), and the result is cold porridge. Streep plays an aging bar-band rocker in southern California who travels to Indianapolis to reconnect with the square nuclear family she ditched decades earlier, and the outsize character invites one of her most grandstanding performances. Like Cody’s previous bad-girl-comes-home drama, Young Adult (2011), this consists mainly of family members crabbing at each other over the past, and like Demme’s last indie hit, Rachel Getting Married (2008), it ends with a semicomic wedding ceremony. You’d think that Demme, so lauded for his concert documentaries, could have wrung a little more juice out of the bar-band scenes, but Streep is clearly faking it, which leaves Rick Springfield to deliver the goods as her guitarist boyfriend. With Kevin Kline and Mamie Gummer.
Ricki and the Flash
PG-13 • 1 hour 40 min • 2015
