Directed by Bruce Beresford
(R)
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Jane Fonda is still “a force to be reckoned with,” said Lou Lumenick in the New York Post. The 74-year-old actress gets her “juiciest part in years” in this by-the-numbers comedy, “cheerfully sending up her own image” by playing an aging hippie in Woodstock, N.Y., who turns her grandkids on to pot and free love when their lawyer mother arrives out of the blue with the two youngsters in tow. But the script is so “tone-deaf and hokey” that “you just feel embarrassed for everyone involved,” including young actors Elizabeth Olsen and Nat Wolff, said Tom Long in The Detroit News. Not only are we asked to accept that Catherine Keener’s uptight New Yorker hasn’t seen her mother for 20 years, we’re asked to believe that each visitor finds a new love interest within a day. There will be “assorted heart-to-heart talks,” a lot of “superficial fun,” and “not much more,” said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Director Bruce Beresford seems content to have created “an undemanding formula picture.” On that level, at least, “the film works.”
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