'Book Club' Sequel Trips into Theaters

Book Club: The Next Chapter, a sequel to the 2018 comedy Book Club, hits theaters this week, but it's unlikely to be any real competition for last week's top movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Given Book Club's generally negative critics' reviews and its likely appeal only to an older audience, Guardians is very likely to repeat at the top of the weekly box office charts. Read on for details.

Via The Detroit News.

The first time around, they were reading "Fifty Shades of Grey." Now the "Book Club" gang is back, and books have been cast aside altogether in favor of a trip to Italy.

Traveling through Italy beats reading E.L. James any day of the week, and the change of scenery does this sequel, and its stars, a fair amount of good. "Book Club" was never really about the books anyway, it was about the friendship of the four ladies at the story's center, and despite some predictable shenanigans through Bel Paese, "Book Club: The Next Chapter" is a silly, solid-enough TripTik that's worth the time invested.

Those four friends are newly widowed Diane (Diane Keaton), restaurant-less restaurateur Carol (Mary Steenburgen), retired judge Sharon (Candice Bergen) and spicy bombshell Vivian (Jane Fonda), and Fonda is the only one of the four who crosses over with the gals from this year's "80 for Brady." (It's fun to think Fonda plays the same character in both movies and that she has two really lively groups of friends whom she keeps totally separate from one another; a crossover between the two squads could make for a fun "Ocean's Eleven"-style heist flick. Heck, you can toss Keaton's pals from "The First Wives Club" into the mix while you're at it.)

"The Next Chapter" opens with a throwback to the early days of COVID, the Zoom call era, the time when we'd bang on pots and pans at 7 p.m. for health care workers and when we all thought the lockdown was a blip that would last two weeks. (Sigh.) It's a charming little piece of quarantine nostalgia, two words we never thought we'd see mashed together when we were wiping down our groceries, as well as a reminder of the euphoric rush people felt when they came out of COVID and reconnected with friends IRL.

It's that reconnection, and the realization that they don't have all the time in the world -- the four actresses age in range from 70 (Steenburgen) to 85 (Fonda) — that spurs their trip to Italy, to throw a bachelorette party for Vivian, who is newly engaged to her beau Arthur (Don Johnson).

They grab their fanny packs -- or are they waist wallets? -- and they're off to the old country to drink wine, visit museums and get into light trouble. (If you don't think they're going to somehow end up in jail at some point, congratulations on seeing so few movies in your life! I'm honestly jealous.)

For awhile, there's no actual conflict in the movie, it's just friendship vibes and light gags, which admittedly vary in mileage. But a kind of warmth between the characters evolves over time, even if, yes, the inpidual actresses are all better than the material, and these elder foursome formulas (see also "Space Cowboys," "Last Vegas," "Poms," "Queen Bees," the aforementioned "80 for Brady," etc.) have worn thin over time.

Get the rest of the story at The Detroit News.