Book Club: The Next Chapter

Book Club was one the surprise hits of the summer of 2018 and was a film I enjoyed a lot more than I expected. It was no classic, but it was a breezy way to spend a few summer hours. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly if you know Hollywood, a sequel was commissioned. The Next Chapter really doesn't have much of the charm of the original and doesn't make a compelling case for existing.

There are a few laughs here and there, but not enough to overcome the mountains of painful double entendres and speeches about friendship. Everyone seems to just be going through the motions and ready to collect their paychecks. But hey, at least there is some stunning Italian scenery to enjoy.

Diane (Diane Keaton), Vivian (Jane Fonda), Sharon (Candice Bergen), and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) are the best of friends. They are meeting in person for the first time since the isolation of the pandemic. They decide to go to Italy.

I'm fine with the first movie. It's fine. Don't ask me to watch a sequel. Yet here we are. I don't begrudge anyone from doing a honest day's work, but this one is a classic Adam Sandler move. Sandler often gets a bunch of his friends and makes a movie at some exotic resort location. There's a lot of that here. The writing is boring. I stopped caring about these characters. Maybe they'll stop making these although I can see a way to make the next one interesting.

It has scenes that make you smile like in the first episode. You can choose to watch if you want to spend a pleasant time. Watching Italy through Bill Holderman's eyes is a different pleasure. Diane Keaton and Andy Garcia go well together. I wish they would come together in a different movie. It is a great chance for us to still see these beautiful people on the cinema screen despite their ages. If I come to Don Johnson's age, I want to look good like him. It is a great pleasure to be able to watch Giancarlo Giannini in this episode. Long live Giancarlo. Thanks to this movie, I realized how much I miss Italy. Wait for me Italy, I'll be there as soon as possible.

By the way, I hope the same cast can make another episode.

A clean, polished, well produced film with some very accomplished and famous stars of Hollywood. So why is it boring?

It feels as though they have tried to find how to prove much older women can't star in films, and wrote a script to prove that. But to hold your interest they locate it in a beautiful country which they show you a lot of.

It's sad that Jane Fonda has so obviously had lots of surgery, but the rest don't appear to have and they've aged well. So why mistreat them by making this shambles of an uninteresting film?

I think it dissolves their reputations somewhat as the film is just not good except in terms of a travel brochure for Italy.

Give it a miss, you won't miss anything.

This appears to be a good excuse for four actors, who seem to get on quite well together, to get someone to fund an all expenses paid trip to Italy to make a movie underpinned by the thinnest of plots. That plot sees the group emerging from lockdown when they finally manage to meet for their routine bookclub. It's at this get-together that "Vivian" (Jane Fonda) announces that she - a lifelong opponent of the institution - is to marry "Arthur" (Don Johnson). "Carol" (Mary Steenbergen) comes up with the idea of a hen trip to Italy and after a bit of scepticism from "Diane" (Diane Keanton) and the timely death of the cat of judge "Sharon" (Candice Bergen) they embark on their trip of a lifetime. What now ensues is a rather predictable and lightweight comedy drama that starts off entertainingly enough but runs out of steam quickly and permanently. The last twenty minutes take us into cheesy territory that really did have me looking around the cinema at the ceiling thinking - "oh, just get on with it". There are a few fun contributions from Giancarlo Giannini as the rather dishevelled police chief and a few cameos from Andy Garcia, but for the most part this is just four folks having a jolly time whilst those of us sitting down remember (or discover) just how beautiful Venice is. It's all instantly forgettable stuff, this, but Bergen has her tongue firmly in her cheek and Jane Fonda just seems to look more android the more films she precariously totters through nowadays.