Intermission: Hawn, Sarandon use talents to hide flawed script

Jim Wunderle is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

This won't be the first or last place to point out the similarities between Goldie Hawn's latest role and her real-life daughter Kate Hudson's breakthrough character Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe's brilliant "Almost Famous."

Hawn's Suzette is an aging (aged would be a better term I suppose) groupie who is still following her heart. She could be Penny Lane 30 years later. To her credit, Hawn, who is now 56, still looks great and is still bubbly enough to make Suzette entirely believable. She's sexy and self-effacing about her silicone-enhanced figure and, together with Susan Sarandon, elevates "The Banger Sisters" to a greater whole than the sum of its parts.

Call it a guilty pleasure, but I got many honest laughs out of the film and left feeling entirely happy. With actresses of a lesser caliber, the flaws and clichs of the plot would have been hard to take, and a few of the characters seem to be merely sketched rather than fully drawn.

But not so with Suzette.

The film opens with Suzette losing her bartending job at the West Hollywood rock 'n' roll bar where she's worked for ages.

"See that toilet? Jim Morrison passed out in there one night with me underneath him," she tells the boss as he's letting her go.

Finding herself out of work and money, she decides to head to Phoenix and hook up with her old partner Lavinia (Sarandon). In the 1960s, these girls were legendary enough that rock icon Frank Zappa labeled them "The Banger Sisters."

There is some truth in this plot device, as Zappa recorded a group of groupies he had named "The GTOs," standing for "Girls Together Outrageously." There was also the legendary "Plaster Casters," but good taste prevents me from describing their exploits in a respectable paper.

Along the way to Phoenix, Suzette picks up an eccentric screenwriter, Harry, played by Geoffrey Rush, no stranger to eccentric roles. Harry is on his way to Phoenix with an old typewriter and a gun with one bullet in it. He say's he's going to see his father.

Upon arrival, Suzette tracks down Lavinia, but finds that things have changed considerably for her former partner in infamy. She's married to a lawyer with political aspirations, has two spoiled teen-age daughters and nobody in Phoenix, least of all her family, suspects her past.

Lavinia tries to quickly dispose of Suzette, so Suzette goes to Harry, who is staying at a hotel.

Her first night at the hotel, she witnesses a high school graduation party where something has gone awry. One of the girls has taken too much LSD. The girl happens to be Hannah, Lavinia's oldest daughter. Suzette nurses her through the night and takes her home, promising not to spill the beans to mom.

This gives rise to Suzette and Lavinia having a second chance at a reunion, and this time it goes a bit differently. "Vinnie," as she used to be known, realizes she's not completely happy with her straight and uptight life. While not wanting to return to her past, she decides it does no good to completely deny it.

She and Suzette, much to the family's shock, decide to go out for a night on the town. Lavinia chops her hair, borrows some tight clothes from Suzette and heads out with her old friend for a night of club hopping, dancing, boozing and some general good-natured mayhem.

Her girls can't believe what might be lurking in their mom's past, and the lawyer husband is thoroughly exasperated.

When Sarandon and Hawn pull out the stops at this point, it's a pleasure to see two actresses, now fairly old by Hollywood standards, being so sexy and having so much fun. Maybe the tide is turning in Hollywood and women can look forward to keeping their careers after the age of 35. These two certainly bring a lot of class, as well as hard-earned experience of their craft, to their roles in "The Banger Sisters."

The plot from here doesn't really matter.

The loose ends get tied up, Harry does what we've expected all along, Vinnie's family situation is a foregone conclusion, and Suzette remains forever Suzette. But first-time director Bob Dolman proves successful with a rather pedantic plot by attracting two gifted actresses to the project.

The mixture of the crowd at the showing I attended ranged from younger people to older folks who were obviously fans of Hawn's other comedies. Despite the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, everyone seemed to enjoy the film.