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Book Club
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STARS Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, Jane Fonda and Mary Steenburgen play long-time friends and book club members. Photo Melinda Sue Gordon / Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
THE QUEENS OF CLUB Veteran actors breathe life into senior-set rom com By Mark Fields
E
xpectations can be a perilous thing. Go into a movie with high hopes, and it’s very often difficult for the actual images on the screen to compare to the ones you conjured beforehand in your head. This is even more of a problem in modern America, where every new feature is promoted to death on every conceivable media platform. But sometimes expectations can work to a movie’s advantage, and that’s the case with Book Club, a senior-oriented comedy with an all-star cast but also a tiresome premise and an utterly dreadful trailer. I went into this film with the lowest of expectations, and although it’s no Oscar contender, Book Club manages to be a sweet, funny, sexy and romantic diversion for moviegoers of a certain age (this critic included). Book Club depicts the long-standing relationships of four women: Vivian ( Jane Fonda), a successful and defiantly single
hotel owner; Diane (Diane Keaton), a recently widowed mother with co-dependent adult children; Sharon (Candice Bergen), a long-divorced federal judge; and Carol (Mary Steenburgen), a vivacious Junior Leaguer in an unfulfilling marriage. Originally friends in college, they have remained together for 40 years through their monthly book club. All a little too comfortable in their personal routines, the four get shaken out of their complacency when Vivian selects Fifty Shades of Grey as their next club reading assignment. Soon, ostensibly inspired by the lurid bestseller, Vivian, Diane, Sharon, and Carol are embarking on new sexual and romantic adventures that are as delightful as they are implausible. Of course, this creates the opportunity to introduce a male quartet of interests for our leading ladies: Don Johnson, Andy Garcia, Richard Dreyfuss and Craig T. Nelson. ► JUNE 2018 | OUTANDABOUTNOW.COM
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5/24/18 3:07 PM