Review: 'The Hot Flashes' a charmless basketball romp - Los Angeles Times
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Review: ‘The Hot Flashes’ a charmless basketball romp

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Susan Seidelman’s “The Hot Flashes” is a post-”Bridesmaids” case of raunch lite, a change-of-life comedy that could have used a change of scripts.

We’re dropped into a suburban (and caricature-ridden) Texas town about to lose its mobile mammogram clinic to bankruptcy. It spurs menopausal go-getter wife/mom Beth (Brooke Shields) to corral a few of her peers — Wanda Sykes’ uptight mayoral candidate, Camryn Manheim’s pot-smoking biker chick, Virginia Madsen’s chain-smoking divorcee and Daryl Hannah’s closeted cowgirl — to play some charity basketball games against the high school girls’ team.

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What could have been an empowering and amusing riff on the typically male underdog genre is mostly charmless, however, thanks to screenwriter Brad Hennig’s superficially bitchy dialogue and a story line involving Shields’ two-timing husband (Eric Roberts) that feels like a repeatedly missed free throw. And nothing can save the ladies-who-lurch awkwardness of the basketball scenes, which generate the wrong kind of laughter.

But when Seidelman relies on the stars’ camaraderie — sassy suspicion that morphs into an us-against-them fighting spirit — there’s an unforced breeziness, only occasionally marred by a miscast Hannah, who appears to be starring in her own weird indie, and Shields’ top-billing earnestness.

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“The Hot Flashes”

Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes

Rating: Rated R for some sexual content and drug use

Playing at: Laemmle Music Hall


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