Meryl Streep, always an acclaimed and chameleon-like actress, took on an unlikely new identity back in 2006 — summer blockbuster comedy star. That was the year when The Devil Wears Prada became a massive hit at the box office, opening opposite Superman Returns and sneakily earning over $326 million worldwide. For the next few years, Streep-starring comedies became reliable counter-programming for audiences seeking an alternative to the typical summer superhero flicks and big-budget sequels. Mamma Mia! was an enormous worldwide phenomenon in the summer of 2008, followed the next year by Julie & Julia. Since then, Streep’s summer box office icon status has become a less-frequent occurrence — the last five years have seen only Hope Springs, in 2012, and that was significantly less of a hit. This year, Streep hopes to light up the summer box office one more time with Ricki and the Flash, from Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), a film tailor-made for the summer. A frothy family dramedy about reconciliation and forgiveness, Ricki doesn’t quite have enough gravitas to have been released any later in the year.
Streep stars as Ricki Randazzo, the frontwoman of The Flash, a rock group that plays as the in-house band at a small bar in Tarzana. By night, she’s a charismatic rock musician, who gives anti-Obama rants on stage and has a complicated romance with her bandmate Greg (Rick Springfield). By day, she’s a cashier at a local supermarket. Her routine is interrupted one day when she receives a phone call from her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline), who tells her that their daughter Julie (Mamie Gummer) has been dumped by her husband for another woman. And so Ricki flies back to Indianapolis — where everyone calls her Linda, her actual name, to her horror — in an attempt to comfort the daughter who resents her for abandoning their family years earlier to be a rock star in California. Meanwhile, Ricki’s two sons, Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate), want little to do with her, and Pete’s wife Maureen (Audra McDonald), who basically raised Ricki’s children while their mother was off following her dreams, thinks that Ricki is just in the way.
And so the film becomes a redemption narrative, where Ricki grapples with her shame and sadness at having abandoned her kids and wonders whether she should even bother trying to reclaim the family that doesn’t seem to want her back. I won’t spoil how the film progresses from here, but, if you know anything about movies, everything happens pretty much as you’d expect; screenwriter Diablo Cody adheres very closely to formula in this one. Ricki is certainly Cody’s most conventional script to date — though it is peppered with the pop cultural references she is known for, this screenplay contains none of the cutesy, stylized dialogue of Juno or the brutal and acidic misanthropy of Young Adult. Ricki is reportedly inspired by Cody’s real-life mother-in-law, but this film comes across as more clichéd than personal.
Streep is as fully committed as ever, imbuing Ricki with a roughness and anarchic spirit rarely seen from her. This may not quite be top-tier Streep, but at this point even an average performance from her is hugely impressive within the context of her versatile body of work. She sings with a worn, earthy rasp; it’s the voice of a woman who has seen pain and hardship, and remarkably it sounds nothing at all like Streep’s singing voice in Mamma Mia! or Into the Woods. She does a credible job performing rock classics from the ‘70s and ‘80s, but is less successful when she and The Flash cater to the bar’s younger crowd by covering more contemporary tracks by Lady Gaga and Pink.
Gummer, who is Streep’s real-life daughter, has the second most difficult role in the film, and she’s very good at navigating the tricky tone she must play here — she manages to portray shock and profound sadness in a way that is convincing but still comic. Legendary Broadway star McDonald, meanwhile, is cruelly given little to do — she has a voice for the ages, but (even in a film about a rock musician where she is fourth-billed) she never gets to sing. All she’s asked to do here is exude warmth and kindness, and she does. As for Stan and Westrate, they do their best, but the two sons are basically non-characters.
Aside from the predictable plotting, Ricki’s biggest flaw is that the lead character is somehow under-written. Ricki’s motivations, for instance, are somewhat too vague and could have used some fleshing out. We know that she left her family years ago to pursue a rock career, but it’s not like she’s playing stadiums. She’s never made it. Ricki is broke, working a minimum-wage day job, and plays in the permanent house band at a dive bar — and they only do covers. Does Ricki feel like this is enough to justify abandoning her family? Is the lifestyle she leads as a “never-was” rock star enough of a fulfillment of her artistic dreams? It’s unclear. Meanwhile, the film makes a point of making Ricki an Obama-hating Republican conservative who we’re told voted for George W. Bush twice — but this side of her is never developed or explored. Other than the few rants she indulges in on stage, her right-wing politics never influence her life in any way. None of her actions or choices come as a result of her conservatism, and this seems to have been included at all only so that her gay son (who already resents her anyway) can accuse her of being a homophobe — even though she never says or does anything than can be interpreted as homophobic.
Demme did dysfunctional family drama before with Rachel Getting Married, but that was rawer and messier, with a gritty handheld aesthetic. Ricki, though, looks glossy and sanitized — it’s a film where an affluent family argues in fancy restaurants and brightly lit kitchens — which undercuts the gravity of the drama. It’s like a Nancy Meyers film that’s trying to be dark. (Interestingly, both Rachel and Ricki were shot by the same d.p., Declan Quinn.) And sure enough, the film’s fluffy summer-comedy aspirations are confirmed as Ricki culminates in a rousing, crowd-pleasing ending, where conflicts can be resolved, and years of pain healed, with music and hugs and heavy, meaningful looks.
Middlebrow audiences will likely eat Ricki and the Flash right up; it’s an entertaining family drama whose every narrative beat is comforting in its familiarity. As a Sunday-afternoon outing with your grandmother, you really can’t ask for anything more; everyone will leave the theatre feeling satisfied and emotionally nourished. But as a work of cinema, it’s completely disposable.
