Verdict: A negligible plot saved by star talent.

Details: Starring Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman. Directed by Wayne Wang. Rated PG-13 for sex-related material. 1 hour, 40 minutes.

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Review: "Anywhere But Here" is a nice enough movie. But it's a monster of an Oscar-nomination machine. Both Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman deserve to make the short list in February for breathing fresh air into an all-too-familiar mother-daughter act.

Sarandon plays brassy, indomitable Adele August — a sort of 1990s conflation of Auntie Mame and Mama Rose. Adele has decided that Wisconsin isn't where her 14-year-old daughter, Ann (Portman), belongs. (Subtext: It's not where Adele thinks she belongs.) So she buys a used gold Mercedes, packs up her daughter, waves bye-bye to her second husband and heads for Hollywood, where she's determined Ann will become a star.

When Ann has the temerity to demur, Adele declares, with the same breezy confidence she brings to lip-syncing to the Beach Boys: "I've always known what's best for you, because I'm your mother and that's my job."

Of course, to live in Beverly Hills takes a job that pays a little better. So the pair moves through a series of dumpy apartments (shades of "Slums of Beverly Hills") as Ann slowly realizes that the job of "mother" is really hers.

The picture's plot is negligible — mostly a series of squabbles, confrontations and reconciliations as these two terrific actors fearlessly explore the whole mother-daughter deal. But after a point, their performances become the point. Sarandon's self-centered obliviousness and manic-depressive ditsiness is a potent portrait of perkiness at the end of its rope. Meanwhile, Portman, who Sarandon insisted play this role, matches her more experienced co-star scene for scene. We've seen her character before, too — the long-suffering daughter stuck with a responsibility she doesn't seek. But Portman brings a clarity to the part. It's a savvy balance of smart-mouthed teenager and vulnerable little girl lost. In a strange way, she takes care of us, the audience, as surely as Ann takes care of Adele.

One final nod to director Wayne Wang, who gave us one of cinema's great mother-daughter movies, "The Joy Luck Club." Typically, the Sarandon role is played by someone who's, well, not traditionally attractive. Such as Bette Midler or Cher. Casting the ever-seductive Sarandon, even when she's doing her outrageous bit, shows insight and even a kind of courage. Underneath its traditional trappings, "Anywhere But Here" has more bite than you'd think.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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