Aptly if unfortunately named, "The Banger Sisters" pretty much lives up to its title. A brash, bawdy comedy about women coming to grips with their sexual pasts, it features Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon giving a cheerfully rude gesture to Hollywood, with its dearth of roles for older women. As they shimmy across the screen, Hawn decked out with breasts that have been enhanced to the point of losing resemblance to anything human, they're at once empowered and kind of sad. It's terrific that they have the guts to strut their stuff like this, but it's humiliating that they have to.
Although Hawn and Sarandon share top billing for "The Banger Sisters," it's Hawn's movie. Resuscitating her early persona as a free spirit, à la "Butterflies Are Free" and "Cactus Flower," Hawn still has that ethereal mix of forthrightness and froth, and that lower-lip thing with the smile, that prove so reliably disarming.
Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn are "The Banger Sisters."
(Fox Searchlight)
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In "The Banger Sisters" she plays Suzette, who with Lavinia (Sarandon) formed the Banger Sisters, two legendary groupies whose sentimental education came at the hands of such rock legends as Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page and Frank Zappa. Now of a certain age, Suzette has been fired from her job at the Whiskey A Go Go and she decides to find Lavinia, whom she hasn't seen in several years, for a loan. She discovers that her friend has completely edited the Banger years out of her curriculum vitae, and has adopted the role of an upper-class homemaker in Phoenix. When Suzette comes knocking, Lavinia offers her $5,000 to leave and never come back.
It's a mortifying moment, but that's as heavy as it gets in "The Banger Sisters," which offers a cautionary sequel to "Almost Famous," in which Hawn's daughter, Kate Hudson, portrayed a legendary groupie (she wasn't a Banger, she was a Band Aid). Lavinia sees the cruelty of her ways and the two women wind up spending a long weekend together in Phoenix, a sort of "Thelma & Louise" in a cul-de-sac during which they come to terms with their past. Suzette rocks Lavinia's world to the point that the latter spontaneously drinks a bottle of wine, cuts her hair, dons animal-print stretch pants and dances, not very wildly, to Talking Heads.
Funny stuff? Not really, but "The Banger Sisters" has its moments, mostly at the hands of Hawn and Geoffrey Rush, whose contrived appearance as Suzette's love interest leads to some mildly amusing encounters. (Rush, who plays a neurotic screenwriter, seems to have studied Garry Shandling for style points.) And the sexual frankness is refreshing. As Suzette and Lavinia banter, their dialogue often suggests how "Sex and the City" might sound 20 years hence. A scene during which Suzette and Lavinia smoke a joint and look at Polaroids of their conquests is reminiscent of the real-life legendary groupies the Plastercasters, whose particular expertise the reader will have to infer.
Rather awkwardly paced by first-time director Bob Dolman, "The Banger Sisters" features good supporting performances, as Lavinia's children, from Erika Christensen and Eva Amurri, Sarandon's daughter. Their portrayal of two spoiled brats is dead-on, and Hawn's tough-talking confrontation with them is one of the movie's best scenes. But like those to Rome, all roads in "The Banger Sisters" inevitably lead to a joke about Hawn's breasts, which constantly threaten to upstage the woman sporting them (viewers may be reminded of Walter Matthau's imploring line in "A New Leaf" – "Don't let them out!"). After such a strenuous demonstration, Hawn's fans will have no choice but to admit that she still has it; they might question, though, just where she can take it from here.
THE BANGER SISTERS (R, 95 minutes) – Contains profanity, sexual content and some drug use. At area theaters.
