**½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn, Geoffrey Rush, Erika Christensen
written and directed by Bob Dolman
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover By any rational standards, The Banger Sisters is a terrible film: it’s ugly to look at, riddled with inconsistencies, stuffed to bursting with hoary clichés, and completely unencumbered by anything resembling intellectual rigour. And yet, it’s so sweetly lacking in malice that I forgave a lot of its sins–not enough for me to recommend it as anything other than a rental, but enough to say that those who dread the thought of a heartwarmer starring Goldie Hawn are in for a pleasant surprise. You’ll roll your eyes at its unearned sentimentalities and impoverished mise-en-scène and mourn the real movie that lurks beneath its crossed wires, but in challenging the rule of irony that poisons even the most well-meaning of films (The Good Girl, anyone?), it stands proudly and defiantly alone.
Don’t get your hopes too high–there’s not too much pleasure to be gleaned from this tale of groupie girlfriends gone their separate ways. As the film introduces us to middle-aged bartending ex-groupie Suzette (Hawn), it’s clear that it won’t play hardball: her firing for drinking on the job is so blandly passed over that it registers merely as a catalyst for an adventure, while a scene in which she disastrously tries to flirt with a young musician is an occasion for mere “awww”s. Things worsen when she hits the road to ask old compatriot Lavinia (Susan Sarandon) for cash; for a tank of gas, she agrees to drive uptight screenwriter Harry (Geoffrey Rush) to Phoenix with her, thus introducing us to the stereotypical guy-who-must-lighten-up-and-get-laid we’ve been seeing all our lives. Given a project in Harry and a mission in Lavinia, she arrives only to discover that “Vinny” is now a well-propertied hausfrau who fears her former Sister’s disclosures–and leading us to (rightly) fear that a life lesson for Lavinia is on its way.
It doesn’t end there. Writer-director Bob Dolman’s sloppy screenplay has no idea what it wants to say; as such it leaves many suggestive areas of the narrative completely unexamined. The chief oversight lies in the hazy reasons behind Lavinia’s reaction against her past: a sharper writer might have explored the ambiguities in the Sisters’ Mother/Whore symmetry and provided a sharp feminist critique, but the film settles instead for a sort of Boudu Saved from Whoring where the “life-force” Suzette fulfils everyone’s dreams.
Inconsistencies abound. Why does Lavinia come off as a hardass even to her children, only to flip over later and earn their scorn? Why does she make a total about-face halfway through the second act, when her fear of exposure has earlier prompted her to try to pay Suzette for her silence? And why can’t Lavinia’s family decide between being released from her repressions, or continuing them? In another writer’s hands, these could be complexities instead of contradictions–the guileless Dolman offers no explanations and thus makes himself look very silly indeed.
And yet, this silliness is The Banger Sisters‘ biggest selling point. Though Dolman may not win any awards for penetrating analysis, he’s a blue-ribbon champion in the department of friendliness. As such, his attempts to contrive a reunion between friends and a family seem entirely unaffected, and unaffected by fashionable ironic cruelty. He may pull his punches, but only to achieve his warm-hearted fantasy of reconciliation; he may not know what he’s doing, but his ill-understood motives seem to be propelled by a desire to be–or at least seem like–the nice-guy giver of gifts. He’s infected by Hollywood methods and conventions but not by its cynicism, and if he’s not quite up to the task of pulling the film off, one can hardly fault him for bringing his guileless warmth to cinematic fruition. Were there some actual artists with the sweet temperament of Dolman, the film environment would be a great deal less polluted–and I’d have to watch fewer films about people’s issues with discount store grotesques.
So even if The Banger Sisters is far from essential cinema–or even non-essential cinema–it’s still (slightly) more than adequate for random pleasure viewing. Its ideal environment would be the VCR, around which one can curl up with their partner and cuddle. The picture is the perfect pretext for the sweetly cheesy feelings of togetherness aroused by such an arrangement. Originally published: September 20, 2002.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers No actual persons, living or dead, were cuddled during the watching of this DVD. The Banger Sisters arrives from Fox in something between a movie-only release and a Special Edition. Offered in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and pan-and-scan editions on the same side of a double-sided disc, the film looks just okay in this digital rendering despite the sheer professionalism of Karl Lindenlaub’s cinematography. Detail is soft, contrast weak, and luminosity low (even sunlit shots strain the eyes)–colouring and saturation are the strongest assets of the image. Audio is 5.1 Dolby Digital; the mix does not waste the opportunity to deliver in the rear channels in scenes set in loud, smoky nightclubs. The subwoofer is used sparingly but effectively, although there is a lapse in logic when Vinnie’s daughter Hannah is caught in a compromising position while listening to rock’n’roll out by the pool: deep bass appears as Vinnie locates the source of Hannah’s music, but in reality, the thump of low-frequency notes is always the first thing you hear from a distant hi-fi.
Director Dolman–who, just as I imagined, bears a passing resemblance to Geoffrey Rush, given that Rush plays the screenwriter character–discusses his make-it-up-as-he-goes-along screenwriting process (which is interesting, since you could time your watch to The Banger Sisters‘ machinations) in a feature-length commentary track that was obviously recorded to the widescreen version, as a few visual elements he points out cannot be seen in fullscreen. Extras on the “A” side include a blooper reel (and they do mean “reel”–it runs over five minutes) in which Hawn can’t keep a straight face as she propositions Rush, plus theatrical trailers for The Banger Sisters and the upcoming Bend It Like Beckham, a film poised to turn Kiera Knightley into the next It Blonde–mark my words. On side “B,” a 14-minute HBO Special (“The Making of The Banger Sisters“) that manages total vacuousness from beginning to end.
97 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; Region One; DVD-10; Fox
