Ricki and the Flash (Meryl Streep)

(Amazon UK link)

This film was recommended to me by Amazon, I assume, because I have very much liked other films with Meryl Streep. She is an outstanding actress, in my view. She 'becomes' the characters she plays in a way that’s rare. The variety of roles she has undertaken is astonishing - and ‘Ricki and the Flash’ is no exception.

Streep, who was over 65 when this film was shot, plays Ricki, a rock singer who hasn’t hit the big time, but plays regularly in a somewhat sleazy bar. During the week she works in a supermarket on the tills, with the aim of making ends meet; but she struggles to do so. Ricki could have passed for forty when we first see her singing and playing with her band, ‘The Flash’; as events turn out we realised that she was probably supposed to be in her fifties.

Early in the film we learned that Ricki’s real name is Linda, and she used to be married to the respectable, well-off Pete (Kevin Kline). They have mostly been out of touch for years, since she abandoned him and their three young children to follow her dreams of becoming a star. But a crisis has hit: their daughter Julie’s husband has left her, and Julie is seriously depressed. Julie is played by Meryl Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer.

So Ricki flies to Indianapolis to spend a few days with her ex-husband and daughter, greeted at first with animosity, but surprisingly quickly she finds that she can help. Her sons are less keen to see her when they have dinner together: one of them has just got engaged, but doesn’t plan to invite his mother to the wedding….

There are several themes in this story. The main one is about what real motherhood means, and how being with children as they grow up matters more than giving birth to them. It’s about following dreams, about family relationships in general, about the contrast between material wealth and talent. There are one or two mildly amusing moments and a great deal that’s poignant and thought-provoking.

Having said that, it’s not the greatest script, and I didn’t much like the music; rock of that nature isn’t my style, and I found it rather too loud at times. Inevitably there’s quite a lot of music, as we see Ricki on stage; in one of the extras we learned that all the music is performed by the characters live to camera, and that Meryl Streep had to learn how to play a guitar in order to take this part.

Greg (Rick Springfield), Ricki’s lead guitarist and boyfriend, is excellent in his role too as a caring and understanding - as well as extremely talented - man. I was surprised to read that the actor is the same age as Streep; he, too, could easily have passed for forty or fifty.

The rating is 12 (PG-13 in the US) and that seems about right to me. There’s one implied intimate scene but we don’t see anything other than a few clothes being discarded in advance. There is some bad language but not the worst words, and there’s no violence at all. The content wouldn’t be of much interest to children or younger teens anyway.

It was rather different from anything we had seen for a while, and we thought it very well made. Recommended, if you are a fan of Meryl Streep and would like to see her in something entirely different. Or if you like films based around rock music.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's DVD Reviews