The Banger Sisters
When Suzette (Goldie Hawn) is fired from her job as bartender at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, she promptly decides to travel to Phoenix, Arizona to see her old friend Vinnie (Susan Sarandon). Stranded at a service station without any money to buy some gasoline, she picks up neurotic, middle-aged author Harry Plummer (Geoffrey Rush), who is heading to Phoenix to permanently deal with his father's negative influence over his life. On arriving in Phoenix, Suzette has a chance encounter with Vinnie's 17-year-old daughter Hannah (Erika Christensen) who, after some recreational drug use, starts throwing up in Harry's hotel room. When she drives her back to her parents' elegant suburban home, Suzette initially cannot believe what she sees: Vinnie, who now calls herself Lavinia Kingsley, leads the more conservative life of the perfect wife and mother—a life which at one point prompts one of her daughters to ask Suzette, "Did she "ever" do "anything" wrong?" Raymond (Robin Thomas), Vinnie's lawyer husband and an aspiring politician, is also unaware about his wife's past. However, Suzette's sudden appearance brings back all those memories for Lavinia. She cuts her hair and throws off her expensive but boring clothes and, just for one night, relives the old days by going dancing with Suzette. They return to Vinnie's home and down in the basement she retrieves some of the memorabilia of their previous life as groupies, which includes a collection of Polaroids of the penises of numerous "musicians and a few roadies". After smoking a marijuana joint they set off the smoke detector, waking up the household. Ginger has a minor fender bender which has everyone off to the hospital. Vinnie has an identity crisis during a family argument where Hannah blames Suzette for disrupting their lives. Suzette leaves and calls Harry telling him she's going back to L.A. Vinnie follows Suzette and they have a heart to heart that ends up with them sitting atop a "got milk?" billboard sign to watch the sunrise. The pair go to the hotel room to find Harry has left. Suzette fears the worst as Harry has taken a gun with him. They find Harry going to see his father, in a cemetery. While Suzette tries to talk sense into Harry, Vinnie loses her patience and bumps into him with the car. Suzette takes the gun and shoots the single bullet into the air. Harry finally comes to grips with his deceased, absentee father. In the end, both Lavinia's husband and her two daughters have understood that she is only human after all. In her graduation speech, Hannah speaks out against anything that is "fake" and urges her schoolmates, teachers and the parents present to "do it true". The following day, Suzette returns to Los Angeles together with Harry, who has come to consider her his muse. The film was released on September 20, 2002. It opened at #2, in 2,738 theaters, grossing $10,037,846 during its opening weekend. It went on to gross $30,307,416 domestically and $7,760,937 from international markets, for a worldwide total of $38,068,353. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 48% based on reviews from 143 critics. The site's consensus states: "Hawn and Sarandon are terrific together, but the hoary plot is predictable and contrived." On Metacritic the film has a score of 48% based on reviews from 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B+" on scale of A to F.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3 out of 4, calling it "Pretty thin, but you grin while you're watching it. "
Plot
The film stars Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon as two middle-aged women who used to be friends and groupies when they were young.