Elise (Goldie Hawn), Brenda (Bette Midler), and Annie (Diane Keaton) were old college friends who reunite after another friend commits suicide in apparent depression over her ex-husband marrying a much younger woman. Something the trio can relate to, as all three of their husbands - played by Victor Garber, Dan Hedaya and Stephen Collins, respectively - likewise threw them over for younger women. So they decide to get revenge on the guys who used them up and spit them out for a newer model.
I think I got curious to watch this after it came up in someone's retrospective on Diane Keaton after she passed away. And I think Keaton gets the best role of the three leads. Brenda seems to mostly be dealing with things by trying to maintain the connection with her teenage son, and keeps worrying about her weight. Midler kind of defaults to sarcastic all the time. Elsie is confronting the lack of roles for women in Hollywood once they reach 40, basically fighting mortality in service of her ego. She's bitter (understandably), but in an entitled way. She's owed the starring role in the hot young director's new film (the director played by young Timothy Olyphant, was not expecting him.)
Annie, meanwhile, is this overly cheerful, stammering Polyanna who makes excuses for everyone and tries to get everyone to get along. Not the free spirit types Keaton often played so much as someone willfully ignoring reality in favor of, not so much a more pleasant alternative as a blander one. Then, every so often, she snaps. You get a glimpse of it in her therapy session, where she resists her doc's orders to hit her with the foam bat, but once she goes for it, hits her three times in rapid succession. She's a bundle of energy and expression, locked down tight by years of trying to coddle her husband's insecurities.
Sometimes it breaks free in quieter ways, when Elise and Brenda convince her to sing aloud. Sometimes it's explosive, like when she gets tired of the other two attacking her for trying not to take sides in their argument and shrieks that they're both selfish and storms out.
No wonder her ex-husband turned what was supposed to be him asking for divorce into one last roll in the sack, then asking for the divorce. She must be dynamite in bed.
*beaten to death*
Ouch, jeez, I'm just kidding. I did expect I'd laugh more than I actually did, though I didn't know going in it kicked off with a suicide. There were a couple of scenes - their trip to a lesbian bar to enlist Annie's daughter in their plan - but it's not so much a movie that makes you laugh as one where you grin at a good one-liner. But it also has a lot to get done in 100 minutes. Establish each woman's current situation, get them together, get them started on revenge (while periodically returning to developments in their individual lives), the part where things hit the rocks between them, the reconciliation, the eventual turning of their plan to a higher purpose.
Maybe I was too invested in them pulling off their plan to laugh at their failures along the way.
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