Billat908

This movie is as bad as many reviewers on other sites would have you believe. But it is a good bad movie. WEll, maybe not a bad movie, but certainly low comedy. It is often almost slapstick, but done very well. Sort of like My Friend Vinnie is a good bad movie. Jane Fonda is perfectly cast, and is almost sympathetic at times, turning in a wonderful performance. Wanda Sykes almost holds the story together with her wit, delivery and common sense. J Lo is her usual self, doing a workmanlike job. The plot is inventive and there are a lot of great lines and situations that are real thigh slappers. Elaine Stritch does a superb job as an in-law who pushes Fonda's character toward reason, describing in colorful detail Fonda's humble origins earlier in her career.

The first half of the movie is way too long. All it establishes is that eastern Kansas has normal folks living their daily lives there. It is all quite well done, but contributes nothing. Most of it could have been shortened. Having been in the Army in 1961 when access to Berlin was closed by the Russians, this movie had some significance to me, but they overstated and belabored the issues. There was way too much of a soap opera taking up valuable screen time. Even when a plot, or at least a story line developed, things took way too long and there was way too much melodrama. This movie has very little content and only one message which took way too long to deliver.