Banger Sisters

Screenwriter Bob Dolman (Far and Away, Willow) directs his first feature in this tale of two middle-aged women—played with professional skill and endless heart by Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon—and their clumsy but earnest reunion after 20 years apart. The catch is that the two women are ex-groupies from the 1970s, and now they couldn’t be more different from each other. Hawn’s character is still a rocker who, after losing her bartending job in a L.A. hard-rock nightclub, drives her El Camino to Phoenix to discover that Sarandon’s character has become a gated-community soccer mom whose husband and kids are oblivious to her past. Geoffrey Rush bums a ride as an obsessive-compulsive writer traveling to the Valley of the Sun to commit fratricide—really. After some uncomfortable, fish-out-of-water interludes for both women, touching sisterly bonding ensues. Dolman’s got a decent outline for a promising movie here, but he neglected to flesh out his character sketches with credible pathos.