An uptight New York City lawyer takes her two teenagers to her hippie mother's farmhouse upstate for a family vacation.
Director: Bruce Beresford
Stars: Jane Fonda, Catherine Keener, Elizabeth Olsen, Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1649780/
Watched online, ok print.
24 songs in the Soundtracks; a couple were performed by cast. The only justification for the Music tag is JDM being a performer/songwriter(?). Casablanca ('42) is a musical compared with this. I'm putting this on my Non-musicals list.
My low rating is not because of the mis-label, but I would never have watched this without that, and I wish I hadn't.
The opening premise is so ridiculous: a woman CK who has not seen her mother JF in 20 years decides to take her children to her mother's home after her husband declares he wants a divorce. She decides this at night, seemingly drives out there the next day, and apparently doesn't call ahead, or ask if they can stay for a few days.
Then the hippie community, tie-dyes, peace symbols and all, are still thriving there (Woodstock), where they protest something every weekend. This time it's some unnamed war, presumably where we have troops?
JF has a grow room in the basement to supplement income as an artist/sculptor. And although she spouts anti-materialism, she has a well-decorated home, mostly looking hippie-ish from the design of the objects, not from their age and purpose. Everything is brightly colored, as though brand new.
CK's daughter & son are y.a., maybe one is still in h.s. The daughter is very judgemental, intolerant of intolerance, etc. The son lives behind his camera, but actually creates a film from the experience, which he enters in a youth film festival and earns a prize. We seem to see it, and it makes even less sense than the film which contains it.
Avoid.
Rated 5.9 (7,379)
distr. IFC, dir. Beresford; 5
