Grade: C+

Verdict: Hawn and Sarandon are starlight, they are golden. But the movie, while often entertaining, isn't worthy of them.

Details: Starring Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon. Directed by Bob Dolman. Rated R for sex, language and drug use. One hour, 38 minutes.

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Theatrical Review:
Every once in a while, as I watched "The Banger Sisters," starring Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn, the thought went through my head: is this what might've happened to Thelma and Louise if they'd never driven off that cliff? One embracing conformity and the other clinging to her oulaw days of tight jeans and tighter T-shirts?

Suzette (Goldie Hawn) and Vinnie (Susan Sarandon) are '60s relics, groupies from the time the term really meant something — mostly being on very intimate terms to every rock name on the classic-rock play list.

Anyway, when we meet her, Suzette is still bartending at the ol' Whiskey A Go-Go and still telling her stories about the time Jim Morrison passed out on top of her in the bathroom. Fired by her boss (who wasn't born until well after the Beatles broke up), she decides to drive to Phoenix where her old girlfriend Vinnie lives. Maybe there, she can cadge a little warm comfort and cold cash.

En route, she picks up Harry (Geoffrey Rush, almost as scarily bad as he was in "Quills"). A failed screenwriter, he's going home to Phoenix to kill his dad. Or so he says. And do we care?

When Suzette finally finds Vinnie, now called Lavinia, she's got a husband with political ambitions, two teenage daughters in different stages of privileged rebellion (Erika Christensen and Eva Amurri, Sarandon's real-life daughter, both good), a House Beautiful home, a swimming pool, waterfalls, tennis courts and a golden retriever. She even has a banana hammock — presumably so her bananas won't get tired.

Vinnie isn't exactly overjoyed to see still-crazy Suzette after all these years. Her family doesn't know about Vinnie's renegade past, and she'd like it to stay that way.

Anyone who, at this point, doesn't realize Suzette will learn to let go of some of her past while Vinnie will learn to reclaim some of hers has probably found many similar surprises in a lot of Lifetime movies.

But to anyone who remembers the skill with which Lawrence Kasdan dissected boomer dreams 10 years after college in "The Big Chill," "The Banger Sisters" is a wince-inducing disappointment. Though it can be entertaining — it's got two fine actors, so how could it not be? — the movie completely misses its chance to deal with some of the interesting questions its striking premise raises.

How did people go from the counterculture to country clubs? From Acapulco Gold to Scotch on the rocks? Sarandon's need to erase her past is as compelling as Hawn's need to freeze it, like some hippie Miss Haversham. Writer/director Bob Dolman just isn't up to the task. He falls back on sitcom predicaments and touchy-feely embraces. The movie wavers between Hallmark card sentimentality and goofy, life-affirming moments straight out of a cellular phone commercial.

Dolman's aces in the hole are his stars. Sarandon, who's cornered the market on mommy roles this fall, has a terrific time spouting phrases like "solution oriented" or realizing that her all-beige wardrobe is the same color as the walls of the Department of Motor Vehicles. She has a harder time with ouch-lines like "I've lost me!!!"

Hawn, by contrast, dresses like a flower. A somewhat wilted flower, but a flower nonetheless. And only Hawn, with her fit thighs and enticing grin, could pull off a character as inherently obnoxious as Suzette. Plus, she gets most of the good lines: when Harry is surprised to hear she was at UCLA, she explains, "I saw Country Joe and the Fish there."

Hawn and Sarandon are women for the ages. Gorgeous inside and out, whether as sexy broads or Oscar-winning grand dames, they take "The Banger Sisters' as far as it can go, on sheer guts and star-shine.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution