In theory, I would <\/span>absolutely<\/span><\/i> love to see a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman that hits out against the agist, sexist societal impulses that seek to relegate women into some sort of cosmic cast-off pile once they\u2019re deemed \u201ctoo old\u201d to be appreciated (read: objectified). Lord only knows what they have seen and experienced during their time in the film industry. Unfortunately, we live in a world where <\/span>Poms <\/i><\/strong>\u2014 an antiseptic but amiable feature from Zara Hayes, who before this primarily helmed documentaries \u2014 is the version studios have foisted upon us. <\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with light-hearted escapism (clearly we need it in 2019), but <\/span>Poms<\/span><\/i> misses the mark with its lazy paint-by-numbers approach and thoroughly corporate conception of rah-rah feminism. It\u2019s as if everyone\u2019s favorite multi-level marketing company \u2014 I don\u2019t want to name names, but it sells a whole lot of leggings and is currently going through bankruptcy \u2014 decided to branch out into film production. The resulting product is threadbare and disappointing, but semi-enthusiastically peddled <\/span>by<\/span><\/i> women <\/span>to<\/span><\/i> women using flimsy hashtags and \u201cempowering\u201d messaging on behalf of cynical executives. <\/span><\/p>\n On to the plot particulars. Here, Diane Keaton takes on yet another thankless leading role as Martha, some sort of vaguely bohemian flea market flipper who has already found out she\u2019s dying from some sort of vaguely alluded-to cancer by the time we meet her in New York City. Dressed like she\u2019s just stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue, she calls her doctor and explains that she won\u2019t be coming in for any more treatments, quickly hops in her Subaru (one of many prominent product placements \u2014 hope you also like Sprite) and hits the highway, headed to Georgia in one of the film\u2019s many inexplicable plot developments. <\/span><\/p>\n All we know about her by the time she pulls into the golf cart-laden parking lot of her new retirement community, Sun Springs, is that she\u2019s clearly not the type of woman who\u2019s going to enjoy making small talk after water aerobics or over a game of bridge. Her out-of-left-field end-of-life choice is never explained, and it definitely feels strange when she suddenly softens and lets her nosy new neighbor (Jacki Weaver as Sheryl, a septuagenarian Samantha Jones<\/a> type, if you need a bit of shorthand) know that one of her life\u2019s unrealized ambitions was to be \u2026 a high school cheerleader?<\/span><\/p>\n Still, her conversation with Sheryl sparks something in Martha, and suddenly the pair are auditioning community members for an all-senior cheer team. After sparsely attended tryouts, they manage to round up a few eager recruits against the wishes of Vicki (Sun Springs\u2019 resident villain, played by Celia Weston), who lets them know in a sickly-sweet Southern drawl that she <\/span>will not stand for this kind of nonsense<\/span><\/i>. Before they know it, they\u2019ve got people talking with their disastrous routine that goes viral on YouTube, and no one knows if Martha\u2019s dying wish to compete in the big cheerleading tournament will come true\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to get too far ahead of myself here, but I guess I\u2019ll take a cue from the film\u2019s montage-heavy editing style and just cut to the grand finale, where predictably the team charms the judges at a big cheerleading competition ahead of a manipulative epilogue that would be tear-jerking, had we gotten to know any of these women well enough to be fully invested. It also doesn\u2019t help that the film can\u2019t tell whether it wants to go super dark (with Perlman\u2019s character, in particular) or super Lifetime (every quick scene of Martha doubled over in pain in her bathroom) \u2014 nothing inherently wrong with either type of film, but rather jarring to see stitched together.<\/span><\/p>\n I was willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt, but it turns out one should trust Anjelica Huston (<\/span>the film\u2019s most public detractor<\/span><\/a>) on such matters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In theory, I would absolutely love to see a comedy starring Diane Keaton, Pam Grier, and Rhea Perlman that hits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":11839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,340],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-movie-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Grade: C-<\/span><\/h3>\n
1 hr., 31 min.; rated PG-13 for some language\/sexual references<\/em><\/h5>\n
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