Tropic Sprockets  / Book Club

By Ian Brockway

“Book Club” directed by Bill Holderman is a feather-weight comedy in the style of “It’s Complicated” without Nancy Meyers’ domestic tensions or zippy one liners. Though the cast headed by Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton is legendary, there is not much here for these great cinema icons to do, other than crack tame jokes and clink wine glasses, along with some conventional mugging for the camera.

This is a feel good comedy and it breezes along as light as Perrier. The trouble is that the dialogue is so uniform as to be more suited to soap opera, with episodes that don’t evolve into anything of intrigue. All events feel static, scripted and stuck in neutral.

The story is simple: four women meet every month to talk books and men. Vivian (Fonda) is an entrepreneur. Diane (Keaton) is a widow, emotionally bound to her two daughters. Sharon (Candice Bergen) is a divorced judge, and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) is a restauranteur with a repressed husband Bruce (Craig T. Nelson). Vivian decides to stir things up by having them read Fifty Shades of Grey. After all, it can’t hurt.

Vivian bumps into her ex Arthur (Don Johnson), while Diane literally falls into the lap of Mitchell (Andy Garcia), an independently wealthy stranger. Sharon tries online dating and finds a nervous George (Richard Dreyfuss), and Carol attempts to rouse her monotone Bruce.

Fonda mildly seasons the story with numerous innuendos and the happenstance enfolds quickly with predictable results.

Every man in the film seems like a wet noodle in contrast to the lively women. Don Johnson runs still. Ditto for Dreyfuss, Nelson and Andy Garcia who all feel half of a spirit with little charge. Not one love interest shares a tangible chemistry.
What we get are the usual Viagra jokes with various knowing titters and cackles. Garcia attempts his best slick yet caring attitude, almost a Cary Grant, but his character is a floater in the background rather than a real person. Dreyfuss is bumbling without an outcome.

The men are mere set peices, statues for each of the women to react to without movement or conflict.

So it goes. While it is wonderful to see this ensemble together onscreen, the nature of the film is strangely uninspired and the males have Low T.

The camera loves the four main actors and it rightly should. It is only a shame that precious little happens. It would have been enough for Fonda and Keaton to play off their co-stars and actually converse rather than go for every easy contrivance and small joke.

Rather than any arresting perspective, “Book Club” is magazine fluff thru and thru. Although brimming with charisma, this is a throw-away film for Fonda and Keaton who deserve a far more meaningful project.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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