if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

"The Banger Sisters" attempts to answer the same question as Lawrence Kasdan's "The Big Chill" from 1983, namely whatever happened to all those wild, unconventional free-living, free-loving counter-culturists from the Swinging Sixties when they finally grew up. Kasdan's film took a serious look at a group of hippies-turned-yuppies, although some of them were still trying to hang on to their ideals in the more materialistic eighties. This comedy, set nearly twenty years later, deals with two middle-aged women who in their youth were notorious rock groupies whose sexual exploits earned them the name "the banger sisters". (They are not, in fact, sisters in the literal meaning of the word). Goldie Hawn's Suzette may be middle-aged chronologically, but mentally she will be forever a teenager. (Just like virtually every character Goldie has ever played). It may be 2002, but Suzette is just as wild and unconventional as she was in the sixties. Her old friend Vinnie, however, has renounced her wild past and become a perfect upper-middle- class suburban housewife and mother, the wife of a successful lawyer and aspiring politician. (In Britain "Vinnie", short for Vincent, is almost always a male name, but it would appear that in America it can also be short for Lavinia). When Suzette loses her job in a rather louche LA bar, she decides to travel to Phoenix, Arizona to see her now staid and conventional old friend. Their reunion has a rather surprising effect on Vinnie, who decides to stop being staid and conventional and to revert to her wild old ways. This is supposed to be a film with a moral about the need to be free and authentic and not to conform for the sake of conformity. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work. It might have done if writer/director Bob Dolman had stressed the idealism of the sixties rather than the sexual licence, but it is all too clear that for the young Suzette and Vinnie the decade was less about peace and love than about sex and drugs and rock-and- roll. Vinnie's change from a banger sister to a pillar of bourgeois society, therefore, struck me less as a betrayal of youthful ideals (which is how Dolman invites us to see it) than as part of the inevitable process of growing up. Inevitable, that is, for anyone without a terminally immature personality like Suzette's. Suzette seemed less like a free spirit (which is how Dolman seems to have thought of her) than like mutton dressed as lamb. There is always something pathetic about a woman in her late fifties desperately trying to dress and act like a teenage slut. Although it is now more than a decade since the film was made, Hawn has not appeared in another feature film since. If "The Banger Sisters" does indeed prove to be her last it will perhaps not be the swan-song she might have wished for, but it is hard to envisage her making a comeback. Her original screen persona in the sixties and seventies was that of the loveably sexy girl whose sex appeal owed as much to her kooky, offbeat personality as it did to her looks. She managed to extend her career throughout the eighties and nineties by the simple expedient of reinventing herself as the sexy older woman whose sex appeal owed as much to her personality as it did to her looks, but she could not carry this trick off indefinitely, and by 2002 it was starting to wear a bit thin. Susan Sarandon is good at portraying Vinnie as a stuffy suburbanite, but never manages to suggest that there might be another side to her character, so when Vinnie suddenly decides to emulate Suzette by trying to recapture her youth the effect is both ludicrous and embarrassing. Another thing which does not ring true is the scene where Suzette berates Vinnie for spoiling her two teenage daughters; in reality it is the Suzettes of this world who tend to spoil their children. (The Vinnies of this world are more often guilty of being over-strict with them). The biggest disappointment for me was the performance of Geoffrey Rush, an actor I have greatly admired in other films, especially "Shine" and "The King's Speech". Here he plays Harry, a neurotic writer whom Suzette picks up en route to Phoenix. Actually, "neurotic" seems like an inadequate word to describe Harry; a man who walks round with a gun containing a single bullet, which he says he intends to use to kill his father, who is in fact already dead, clearly has serious mental health issues. Such a character seems out of place in what is otherwise supposed to be a comedy. The suggestion that all his problems can be solved simply by spending a night in bed with Suzette seems, to say the least, inadequate. There is no reason why a successful comedy film could not have been made about two ageing sixties swingers, but with its corny script, its stereotyped characterisation, its below-par acting, the misconceived and unnecessary Harry sub-plot and its phoney attempts at moralising, "The Banger Sisters" falls a long way short of being that film. 4/10

Ever since "Blow", there hasn't been a single movie that has brought me that strange, familiar 70's and 80's nostalgia feeling. Well, this one does it even better!Towards the end (the graduation scene), the feeling did kinda of wear off, but in the driving through the desert scene, the movie returns to it's roots, leaving you with a warm feeling around your heart. The thing with "The Banger Sisters" is that you have to see it as the drama that it is, as well as the comedy.The soundtrack was incredible, filled with nostalgic songs that brought real authenticity to the movie. The cast was marvelous, Sarandon and the forever ditzy blond Goldie Hawn are a match made in heaven, both perfect as always. No matter what the critics and the other reviewers say, this film was a deep, emotional journey of self discovering, and, in my opinion, one of the most underrated movies of all time. One of the main things that this film shows us is that we can sometimes forget who we once were and what our wishes and plans for the future were, but that it's OK, as long as we have that special person who knew us before our lives turned out different than what we expected. With that person in our lives, we can never forget the good, old days.I laughed, I cried, I remembered... I loved it! Highly recommended!

Goldie Hawn is an ex-groupie who never grew up; she loses her job and hits the road in search of her best girlfriend from the '60's, now a lawyer's wife with two teenage daughters. Routine serio-comedy begins well, with quirky Geoffrey Rush joining Hawn on her journey, but the movie runs out of ideas soon after Hawn meets up with uptight Susan Sarandon (well-cast but not quite in the swing of things). There's the obligatory learning-how-to-loosen-up dance scene at a crowded bar, this just after Sarandon gives herself a hip new 'do--another cliché. Near the finish, when Hawn and Sarandon chase Rush down in a cemetery, the film comes to a complete stop. However, the nicely-done final chain of events almost makes up for the flaws in "The Banger Sisters", a movie so slight it doesn't require much thought or commitment from the audience. It just wants to be a little sassy and silly and at that it succeeds--for about an hour. **1/2 from ****

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.