Ricki and the Flash

 In Director Jonathan Demme’s Ricki and the Flash, Meryl Streep, once again, proves there’s nothing she can’t do.

Here, she shows a solid singing voice as Ricki, a local rock star at a Tarzana, California music hall, who left a country club lifestyle in Indianapolis, Indiana twenty years earlier, so that she could pursue her career.   

Contacted by her ex-husband (Kevin Kline) about the breakup of their daughter’s (Mamie Gummer) marriage, Ricki heads back to the family she abandoned.

Everyone in the film gives a crackerjack performance and Rick Springfield deserves as special shout out for his work as Ricki’s lead guitarist and boyfriend.

While I enjoyed the film overall, there was, in my mind, a very odd decision with Writer Diablo Cody’s story.

For more than half the film, I was engrossed with the mother-daughter story, which I felt was not fully resolved before Ricki left to go back to California.  Then, it was almost as if I was watching a new story about Ricki and her boyfriend’s relationship.  Then, that morphed into a third story of going back to Indiana for her the marriage of one of her son’s (Sebastian Stan).  And, oddest point of all, the daughter was nearly left out of that story. 

For that reason, I can only give Ricki and the Flash a 3.4 out of 5.