**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, Erika Christensen, Robin Thomas, and Eva Amurri
Directed & written by Bob Dolman
2002
98 min R
“The Banger Sisters” is a good movie trapped in a formula. I really liked the relationship between the lead characters and I enjoyed watching them, but at the same time a voice in my head kept saying, “you know what’s going to happen next.” I wanted so badly for Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn to sneak out of the multiplex version of the movie and into the one at the theatre where you get all the subtitles.
Back in the day, Goldie and Susan used to be groupies for bands like The Doors and Black Sabbath. I mean, their characters used to be groupies. But while Susan is all grown up and living the posh suburban life, Goldie is still working at the same club, picking up the hot rockers, and dressing like a form-fitting, brightly-colored explosion at the Salvation Army. Fate throws them together again—who cares why—and hilarity and hijinks ensue. Susan has never told her family about Goldie or their wild youth together, and so the two of them strike an uneasy truce in which they will pretend to be old friends from college, and Goldie will try not to show so much cleavage.
I like it when movies contrast ideologies, and this is when “The Banger Sisters” really hits its stride. Neither Goldie nor Susan has all the answers. I like that, despite its mockery of the buckled-down suburban lifestyle of no choices, “The Banger Sisters” shows the life of a groupie as being empty and repulsive. Susan’s life is flattened-out and lifeless, but Goldie’s is sad. Susan has mistaken the good-looking life for the good life, as if creating the first will eventually lead to the second. Her mothering is all quick-fixes and smiles, putting off the real discussions, fights, and intimacy for another day in case “we have people over tonight.” Not surprisingly, her husband (Robin Thomas) treats her like a mommy and her children (Erika Christensen and Eva Amurri) see her only as a distant embodiment of robotic duty. But lest we think that groupie Goldie will simply stroll along and straighten everything out, rest assured that her life is no bed of roses either. Early in the movie she makes a pass at a rock singer, only to be humiliated by a younger harlot. Squandering her youth has left her adrift in middle age. Each woman needs something of the other.
But “The Banger Sisters” doesn’t let the sisters loose. They do everything we expect them to, including fighting and reconciling at the appropriate times. Goldie’s wild antics help Susan with her daughter, Susan helps Goldie with some of her problems, and the revelation that Susan used to be wild is a new lease on life for her relationship with her family. There’s even a big “this is what we’ve all learned” speech near the end. The entire issue of being a rock bimbo, instead of being mined for all it’s worth, is glossed over, including all the drugs, STDs, and radical ‘60s politics that entails. Susan’s husband is either extremely accepting or extremely dim; he, like the movie, treats her freshly-revealed past of “you used to be a floozy?” more like “you used to have a belly-button ring?” More hints of what the movie could have been crop up around the failed writer-turned-drifter played by Geoffrey Rush. A hypochondriac who hitches a ride with Goldie, on her way from L.A. to Suburbia, he represents the kind of more interesting, wilder tangents “The Banger Sisters” could have included.
Hawn, Sarandon, and Rush could inhabit these roles in their sleep and are all wholly convincing. But in the end, “The Banger Sisters” is a just a little too shallow for its promising set-up. Goldie says good-bye to Susan and her family in one of the closing scenes, and the movie doesn’t exactly say why. But I know: it’s because flicks like this always end that way.
Finished December 11th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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