Ricki and the Flash

First of all, Ricki (Meryl Streep) is not a famous rock star. She gave up her family's respect for a job as a cashier and gets gigs playing in a bar after hours. Yeah, she's definitely not famous. She's only released one record of her own and the band sustains themselves on covers of songs made famous by others.
Then she gets a call from her ex, Peter Brumble (Kevin Kline) who still calls Ricki by her birth name, Linda. Their daughter, Julie (Mamie Gummer), is going through a rough patch. Her new husband just left her. So Ricki flies home to the daughter she abandoned and Julie isn't that happy to see her. But Pete kept a huge secret from Ricki, Julie tried to kill herself when her husband, Max (Gabriel Ebert) left her for another woman. This truly shocks Ricki. She tries to help her daughter but her biggest accomplishment is finally getting Julie to clean up and put on real clothes. And though Pete is stiff, stuffy and snobby, he still keeps pot in his freezer and has no problem telling Max off, even in front of his new woman. Max declares that he got married too young but this new woman has kids and a dog. Now, you have two dogs, Ricki savagely informs her.
The family dinner doesn't go well. It is a fancy restaurant but Julie doesn't bother changing out of her pajama bottoms and fluffy slippers which is just great and hilarious for the viewer but painfully sad for the character. Josh (Sebastian Stan), the older son, doesn't even bother to inform his mother that he's engaged to his girlfriend of two years, Emily (Hailey Gates) while the youngest, Adam (Nick Westrate) flinches away from his mother's embrace.
And then Peter's new wife, Maureen (Audra MacDonald) turns up, looking far too perky for having just survived a red eye flight and she and Ricki get into an old fashioned pissing match over everything, including how Ricki has handled Julie, which included letting her miss a therapy session. So Ricki leaves and gets back to her life, though she's bitter and calls out Mick Jagger during one of her shows, saying that society has a double standard, a man can leave his kids and be fine but a mother cannot. Though she might be right away society, she's not right according to me. I don't like people of either gender who leave their families.
Fortunately, Ricki gets some wise words from her band mate and almost boyfriend, Greg (Rick Springfield), telling her that it is not their (her children) job to love her, it's her job to love them. And she does, from a distance.
At least Maureen finally throws her a bone and sends Ricki a super fancy invitation to Josh's wedding and Greg sells his guitar so they can go to the wedding.
Yeah, that's the movie. My problems with it are numerous and that is unfortunate. I really thought Ricki would have finally reconnected with her kids but she really didn't. For that one moment, when she gives Josh the gift of her music, they did, but the holes are still there. And the children are underdeveloped though they each get some good lines now and then, but the boys could have played by cardboard cutouts. I know that's mean, but they don't have much personality, and we don't even find out what they do in terms of careers. And I can't figure out how Pete was ever attracted to Ricki in the first place much less how they had sex three times. Pete also had the worst line in the film when he said that he felt like Thomas Jefferson in Monticello. The reason this is inappropriate to me, Jefferson slept with his one female slave and in this film, Pete's second wife is also African American. That line should be offensive.
Nothing much happens in the film but Ricki finally gets some joy and passion back in her life and all she had to do was have sex with Greg and voila, everything gets and seems better when it really isn't. We have no idea how Julie recovers and moves on from her heartbreak and why Maureen decided that it was important for Ricki to be at Josh's wedding. Thank goodness Meryl is great, of course she is, she's the greatest actress alive right now, but this movie shouldn't have been made. Diablo Cody, who wrote the screenplay, also wrote Juno which was much better than this. Ricki's character shouldn't have been sent away so early, Instead she should have stayed and formed a solid relationship with Julie, never mind if her sagging career suffered. Alas, the movie has already been made. At least Ricki is happy, I don't know if anyone else is, I'm not. Grade: B