Hollywood’s Grumpy-Old-Ladies Genre

Unexpectedly, and seemingly out of nowhere, Hollywood has stumbled upon a new genre: Grumpy Old Ladies, the category represented by The Book Club: The Next Chapter and 80 for Brady. Its participants are actresses past middle age: Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen in the former film; Fonda, Sally Field, Rita Moreno, and Lily Tomlin in the latter. Their busiest, artistically significant years are behind them.

Each movie gathers the old gals as safety-in-numbers buddies, either traveling to Italy in search of love inspired by their escapist reading habits or heading to the 2017 Superbowl in Houston in pilgrimage to football idol Tom Brady. It’s a strained, retooled version of the road-movie genre that once defined American films in the ’70s, when those actresses hit their peaks.

But that past sense of discovery, exploring America’s multiplicity and revealing national identity (derived from the social inquiry of The Grapes of Wrath and On the Road — peaking in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore) has narrowed into these self-involved farces. Book Club and 80 for Brady both pander to smirky attitudes about old-age sex, like Porky’s for postmenopausal binge-watchers.

There has to be a political rationale behind the Grumpy Old Lady movies appearing in the midst of the Marvel Cinematic Universe rout. And it can’t simply be about chasing the Depends market. Hollywood’s reluctance to deal with contemporary America’s complicated, divisive realities produces either Diversity Inclusion Equity (DIE) agitprop or puerile diversion. (This would include Everything Everywhere All at Once, which, despite its quasi-feminist sympathies, is essentially a comic-book flick.)

Fact is, the Grumpy Old Ladies movies appease corporate media’s standard “both-sides-of-the-aisle” sentiments that unduly venerate Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Dianne Feinstein, Christine Blasey Ford, and Lisa Murkowski — aged political operators and would-be heroines of the Left. Outrageous behavior by those elderly “Squad” members (pick your favorite moment of their rhetorical offense) has influenced the on-screen exploits of hard-line feminists such as Fonda and Tomlin, whose sisterly media tours, including on The View, resemble a feminist vaudeville act. They’ve found equity with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s insufferable Grumpy Old Men series.

The Grumpy Old Lady movies differ from The First Wives Club, Because I Said So, and Guilt Trip — comedies about sisterhood as well as motherhood — through their emphasis on low-down sex farce. These new films lack the wisdom of maturity. Characters bicker harmlessly because they appreciate one another’s cuteness and shared suspicion of men — traits seemingly devised by patronizing men and unhappy women. (Bill Holderman directed the Book Club films, co-written with Erin Simms; Kyle Martin directed 80 for Brady, produced by the athlete Tom Brady and written by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins.)

While these passable entertainments are best viewed when confined to airplane travel, they share a trivial TV-movie tone. Despite gesturing toward pathos (an 80 for Brady subplot concerns illness and was reportedly based on a real-life troupe of elderly fans dedicated to Tom Brady), the emphasis on comic formula condescends to the experience of ageing. The 2003 British film Calendar Girls did not; its story of middle-age women posing nude for charity (a female version of The Full Monty) was rooted to kitchen-sink realist tradition, whereas the Grumpy Old Lady films are no doubt based on the success of the raunchy Girls Trip and Bridesmaids, both dubious expansions on feminist privilege.

The iconography of the Grumpy Old Lady genre suggests a time-lapse montage of cultural evolution: The former stars’ faces remind viewers what they used to mean to the culture — or else these nipped and tucked visages mean nothing to Millennials who can only respond to each film for its class-reunion-style premise. The anecdotal plot points are not so much about survival as about surviving humiliation. Each actress puts across emotionally persuasive moments, yet there’s a bland, unappealing imperiousness in the street smarts of 80 for Brady and the romantic resolutions of Book Club, which get no deeper than being girlish.

These Oscar nominees and wannabes hide behind their career stats — maybe implying some still-suppressed resentment. Fonda (best actress of the ’70s) and Keaton (best actress of the ’80s) once had real force on screen. Now Fonda impersonates Cher while Keaton dithers. What’s left for such former powerhouses in the post-feminist Hollywood they created lacks the challenging, complex historical reflexivity of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Is this all that Hollywood’s feminist liberation has come down to?