An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from the damned thing but since it was starring Diane Keaton, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it was fairly abysmal, I'm afraid. And yet, Diane Keaton and Jacki Weaver are both such fine actresses, it was actually rather impressive how much they managed to get from such poor material. I mean, the whole approach was so misguided starting with the fact that the main character was dying of cancer or the fact that she couldn't stand her new neighbour at first. These were such tired old boring narrative tropes. I mean, I could imagine a completely different story during which Martha met this new gal who was having fun with some poker games and other more or less illicit affairs. Suddenly, she would discover that, even in the twilight years of her life, life could still be an adventure. Above all, instead of being lonely, she would have a great friend from now on. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on this great couple of friends, for some reason, they decided to have them start a geriatric cheerleading club because it was exactly what this movie needed at this point, a seriously tedious completely predictable gimmick. I mean, I have nothing against cheerleading, as a European, I have very little affinity with this 'sport' but I'm pretty sure it would have been more fun and/or more rewarding to see Martha and Sheryl running instead some illegal poker games in this retirement community. The other annoying thing with this approach was that all the other women were even less developed than the two leads, they had barely any personality whatsoever and were reduced to some caricatures just to get some cheap laughs. Anyway, to conclude, even though I have to admit that the damned thing was rather harmless, it was still pretty weak and you should probably avoid it.

5/10