If anyone had any misgivings about Meryl Streep’s ability to act, well … that should have been abated long ago. If anyone had any doubts about her ability to sing, well … everyone needs to just stop that right now.
If anyone had any misgivings about Meryl Streep’s ability to act, well … that should have been abated long ago.
If anyone had any doubts about her ability to sing, well … everyone needs to just stop that right now.
She's been singing for almost as many years as she's been winning Oscars. Don't believe me? I remember her first belting out an emotional tune with Jack Nicholson in Heartburn nearly three decades ago. She had a tender gestational love song in Ironweed, a Ray Charles ballad in Postcards from the Edge (her character was a singer, based on Carrie Fisher in real life), and a Broadway flop in Death Becomes Her. She was a melancholy folksy crooner in A Prairie Home Companion and an elder pop star in the ear-wormy ABBA-inspired Mamma Mia, along with nearly half a dozen more of her other significant roles over the last 40 years, not the least of which is her take as a fairy tale evil sorceress in Into the Woods only last year.
Now she's back with a guitar, a mike, a funky aging rockster's hairdo and about all the savvy of modern living to boot. Ricki and the Flash is another gem of Streep's oeuvre, a career marked by a series of indelible characters, and this one is no different except that it's unlike any other she's ever done.
Ricki, or Linda – as it says on her birth certificate – gave up her three kids and husband Pete (Kevin Kline) long ago to chase her dreams of rock stardom. She has an American ‘don't tread on me' flag on her back and dresses otherwise like a 55-year-old teenager with weird hair. She's the epitome of a failed aging queen of the musical stage. At her bar, she can cover Bruce Springsteen as easily as Pink or Lady Gaga, alternatively out of raw emotionality or base necessity.
Sadly for her, those dreams never came true. She's a regular at a small bar, not a headliner at a major arena. One day, Pete calls her asking for help. His or her daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer) has had a serious personal setback: her husband leaves her for someone else. Julie, in turn, melts down and settles in to a kind of devastation holiday at Pete's palatial mansion in Indiana.
Not knowing what to do with her at this point, he rings up Ricki, er… Linda. She decides that she can walk away from her day job at a grocery store and from her band, The Flash, led predominantly by Greg (1980s pop rock icon Rick Springfield), along with other notable rock legends including the recently late bass monster Rick Rosas.
She's never been much for the ‘mom' thing but she shows up at Pete's place anyway to help however she can. Needless to say, the path to redemption is paved with good intentions … and a whole lotta family quarrels. It's a less than stellar reunion and more than a little uncomfortable for the audience members to simply be witness to. It's a lot like having Thanksgiving dinner with your own estranged children: highly charged and somehow inescapable.
There's only one person who could have done such a masterful job of scripting this mess: Diablo Cody, she of Juno and Young Adult. No one else knows how better to capture the nuances of people at the heights of their personal lows who somehow still manage to have meaningful character arcs in their lives. At the same time, she knows how to throw in a snarky, smart quip of dialogue to keep things light but still edgy. That's a tough order and Cody proves her mettle here.
And I can't imagine anyone at the chair of such a beautiful catastrophe as acclaimed director Jonathan Demme either.
Ricki is partly a story told through the power of song, and smartly so. The rest of it is an oft-intense character drama about a middle aged woman who lost her dream and her family but still chases both of them in her own way, albeit in leather pants.
There's a lot to be said for depictions of these kinds of raw family strains. I must admit that I shed a tear or two – or 20 – for the troubles expressed by these aloof and aloft family members. While much of the film feels like it isn't really going too deep into the psychological damage, it remains a satisfying watch. It has its trials and tribulations, its moments of doubt, its sad songs, but in the end a cymbal crash reminds us all that the journey is often strife but at least we all love each other, and that's the important thing.
