Who payed the critics

Overrated

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

In First Wives Club, Goldie Hawn said: 'There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: "Babe", "District Attorney", and "Driving Ms.Daisy."' Goldie Hawn was for three decades the eternal babe. However, even for Goldie Hawn there came a time, when 'babe' was no longer possible. With Banger Sisters she is for the last time 'babe' and is also saying good bye to this role, as she realised that she is too old for this. Consequently, she never appeared again in any other movie after Banger Sisters, evidently as she does not want to become "District Attorney". Banger Sister is about two women looking back on their lives. They were friends when young but developed in different directions after separating. Suzette (played by Goldie Hawn) stayed 'babe' and worked as bar tender in music clubs, while Lavinia (Susan Sarandon) married a lawyer and politician and became mother of two daughters. They also meet Harry(Geoffrey Rush) who also looks back on his life and on missed opportunities. The film is not perfect. The speech of Lavinia's daughter at the end is just embarrassing. Otherwise it is sometimes funny, sometimes sentimental. The film is also about friendship and how friendship can develop (here between Suzette and Harry) and how friendship can survive over decades.

The Banger Sisters (2002): Dir: Bob Dolman / Cast: Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon, Geoffrey Rush, Erika Christensen, Eva Amurri Martino: Offensive title with sexual undertones regarding the term "banger." Goldie Hawn plays a rock music groupie fired from the bar she worked at so she sets out seeking financial aid by rekindling a friendship. She picks up an unstable screenwriter with a gun with one bullet purposed for his dominating father. She encounters her friend's drunken daughter after a prom party. She escorts her home and reunites with Susan Sarandon who gave up groupie life for motherhood. As predicted they struggle through differences but the biggest problem is the permissive attitude towards this behavior. Sarandon is outraged upon catching her daughter having sex in the pool but Hawn dismisses it. Director Bob Dolman does well with the flat material aided by the two stars. Hawn clearly running the show going from a life she never outgrew, to a life she feared facing. Sarandon surrendered to home life and is now refacing her past. How this is played through is not necessarily encouraging. Geoffrey Rush as the screenwriter serves no purpose. Erika Christensen recites her rebellious role from Traffic to a far lesser degree. It is unfortunately that a comedy featuring leads such as Hawn and Sarandon would be so dull, but that transpires here quickly. Potential theme warped by degenerate writing. Score: 2 ½ / 10

I didn't particularly like or dislike this movie. In fact I was lying on my couch and had nothing better to do than to watch it, so I did. It seemed like parts of it were funny and others were boring but there was this one scene towards the end of the movie when Susan Sarandon day dreamed for a few seconds remembering her past and they showed Los Angeles in the sixties that made me so want to go back to that era. It was a simple, plain shot of people walking on the sunset strip in Hollywood and you could tell how much those people loved it. I was very young in the sixties and didn't know what was happening then but now I look at it I know that this must have been the greatest time ever to have experienced in your teens, twenties and early thirties. Everyone looked so ... carefree and happy to be part of that time of experimentation. WOW ... man was it colorful and cool ... anyways, that's all I have to say and I'm sure no one will find this comment useful but if you were growing up in the sixties I envy you!!!

When fifty-something rock chick Suzette loses her bar job she heads out to Phoenix to beg some money off friend and fellow former groupie Vinnie, despite not having seen her for about 20 years. On her way there, Suzette runs out of cash and offers neurotic coach passenger Harry a lift if he pays for petrol. Once she gets to Phoenix she finds that "Lavinia" is now a respectable member of her community, married to a lawyer and a mother of two teenage girls and the unannounced arrival of Suzette is not something she appreciates. Despite Lavinia's attempts to politely reject Suzette, the latter settles back into the former's life.Even as much as an hour into this film I still hadn't really worked out what it was trying to do or what it was trying to achieve. The narrative was a strange mix of comedy and character drama that didn't really come together that well for the most part and I found this pretty off-putting for the first half. I think the problem was that I was actually interesting in the different paths that the two friends' lives had taken and I liked the contrast and was hoping it would produce a good drama. However after a brief flirtation with something interesting the plot falls easily into the obvious direction of the free-spirited Suzette helping Harry, Suzette and Suzette's family to "lighten up" and be better for it. In doing this it is never better than reasonably amusing and produced a few laughs and a pretty solid atmosphere of returning friendship but unfortunately it doesn't do anything that interesting. I would have liked if it had done something more interesting with the characters and questioned Suzette's life as harshly as it does Vinnie's.Hawn does the best she can with the character and produces a nice simple block but isn't able to search within herself due to the limitations of the script. Sarandon undergoes an obvious transformation but works well with Hawn in the later scenes. It is a shame that such a talented actress isn't allowed more to work with but if you only want the film to be a chick flick comedy then she is good enough. Likewise with Rush, he is better than the bookend of a character that he is given and I'm not sure why he even bothered. Christensen is pretty natural but Amurri is annoying while Thomas is just plain stiff.Overall then this is a so-so film that is amusing but doesn't do anything of interest with it. The very obvious "be true to yourself" plot is rather sullied by the suggestion that Suzette is "right" – a problem that could have been avoided if the script had been braver and placed her equally with Vinnie, instead of having her as the catalyst for everything good happening to the other characters. Amusing fare for some but it is difficult to overlook just how uninspiring and unadventurous it is.