The Hot Flashes

There is a sharp comic satire buried beneath the clichés and underwhelming effect Susan Seidelman's The Hot Flashes leaves on a viewer. Despite a capable directing effort on her part and the cast's evident enthusiasm for the material, this is a comedy that plays things safely and one that never is funnier than the idea of a basketball team called "The Hot Flashes." There's enough in the film to hold interest but not enough to cordially recommend.

The plot centers around Beth (Brooke Shields), a middle-aged woman currently going through menopause, and her family, made up of her husband (Eric Roberts) and her daughter. When Beth, who is known to take up numerous hobbies, however, not known to carry them out in a meaningful way, realizes that the local mammogram unit will be closing due to lack of financing on her part, she decides to form a basketball team called "The Hot Flashes" with several girls from her quiet Texas town named "Burning Bush." The goal in mind is for the team to play the championship school basketball team and raise $25,000 to save the mammogram unit.

As upsetting as this will be for some people to hear, the thematic idea that "women can do more than men" is hardly as subversive as it was so many years ago. While films should exist that show off a strong central female or more, having a film predicated off that idea and nothing more is beginning to become tiresome. The Hot Flashes even manages to downplay its central premise of menopause, offering little comedic or dramatic points about the inevitable, life-changing stage women must go through, only offering the redundant piece of optimism that despite menopausal setbacks they still have game.

I recently watched a film called Coffee Town, which was a simple, pleasant comedy centered around three characters who spend their days at the local cafe, using it as a free-office with Wi-Fi, coffee, and all the baked goods they need. While a tad vulgar, the film managed to disregard the idea that a film needs to be oppressively raunchy in order to be funny. The Hot Flashes does something similar to Coffee Town, which is make most of the characters possess wholesome morality, or at least a moral compass. Not to mention, their southern drawl is a sweet diversion from the city-slicking bawdiness that has been commonplace in cinema recently. And it's always nice to see a film maturely explore the reality of age as well as the optimistic way of looking at it.

But that doesn't excuse the idea that The Hot Flashes feels like Bridesmaids without a bite and that isn't because of the lack of language, sexual content, or gross-out humor. It's because Bridesmaids manages to try and make its characters come to life, using real-life situations and bittersweet reality. The characters in The Hot Flashes know they're getting older and there's no true reality to face since they're constantly reminding themselves they still have it. Not to mention, it doesn't help that the team itself is composed of the good mother, the sassy black lady, the chubby girl with the foul-mouthed, the town tramp, and the simple cowgirl.

Starring: Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Wanda Sykes, Eric Roberts, Mark Povinelli, and Camryn Manheim. Directed by: Susan Seidelman.

I really enjoyed The Hot Flashes. I loved the relationships between and among the women and the empowering message it sends to people of all ages. There are far too few movies with women in central roles and I hope that people will go out and see it so more will get made. I went with my seventeen year old daughter and it was great to see her cheer for fifty year old women playing basketball. I absolutely support the central theme of breast cancer prevention and I loved seeing it played out on the big screen. Yes the jokes were a little silly and unnecessarily raunchy at times, but it was generally a fun, women oriented, feel good comedy. Go out and see it; bring your daughters, bring your sons, and cheer loudly together.

Susan Seidelman's gem of a comedy tells a story that run-of-the-mill Hollywood flicks are loath to tell: The story of underdogs such as women of colour, queer women, women of a certain class, and most notably women of a certain age. This movie challenges the viewer by making its subject a demographic of people who are grossly underrepresented in film and media, and yet it's hardly a shocking or radical film. Seidel brings us to the American heartland where we find ourselves welcomed by surprisingly believable characters (for the most part) in outrageously comic situations.

The film had plenty of laugh-out-loud moments: in particular, the cheerleaders, the second game, and Wanda Sykes' hair moments. Actually, everything Wanda Sykes says and does in this movie is a riot. However, it could have been funnier. The jokes are there, but sometimes their delivery isn't quite ostentatious enough to really knock them out of the park. Also, though most of the characters were quite believable (especially Camryn Manheim's character, Roxie), other important characters such as the antagonist mom whose name I forget were a bit two-dimensional, and some of the dialogues felt a bit lazy. Honestly, if this movie had been about a group of middle aged guys returning to basketball to raise money for prostate cancer, all other things the same, I probably would have given the movie a 6 or 7. But seeing a feel-good comedy that actually celebrates women (in a suffocating media environment where relegating female roles to either sex goddess, love interest/love obsessed, or obsessive villain is the norm) is such a welcomed and needed breath of fresh air that its occasional cinematic mediocrity can be overlooked. Now, if only Hollywood could make a movie with the spirit/guts of this flick combined with the technical prowess of a movie like the Avengers...

''A group of middle aged women play basketball and prove a point.'' And that is, with not many other words, the entire movie. The entire 90 minutes you sit there, there are no other plots, no other events, no other nothing. Just that. 5 middle aged women playing basketball to raise some money for charity. The first half of the movie seems a bit interesting, as the actions happen in different places, the dialogs are varied, but then , in the second half of the movie, things become, let's say, static. It only focuses on the gym where the games are played and that's it. Quite boring for 45 minutes. And even worse, the ending is ridiculously predictable, it doesn't give any thrill. Important is that there are no useless scenes, everything that happens, matters. All in all, if you are just trying to waste the next hour and a half, I am quite sure that you can find something more thrilling than this.

Saw this last night at the USA Film Festival in Dallas. Wasn't aware of the director's background until she was introduced before the viewing. But she is impressive! The PSA encouraging women to get their annual mammogram is really funny as is the movie. The whole theater laughed and actually cheered during the basketball game sequences. My husband had to shush me when I kept cheering the great shots made by the Hot Flashes. These five women put in lots of hard work to become so proficient on the court, although there was probably a lot of footage left on the editing room floor. If it were not for a brief "sex" scene and the hilarious off color jokes, I would love to take my 11 year old granddaughter to see this to encourage her budding career!