Girls just want to have fun

>> The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
is folksy, empowering—and dull

by MARK SLUTSKY

Some movies are destined to be either loved or hated down demographic lines. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is one of these, a well-made movie with a lot of talent behind it that a good section of the population will likely find completely unpalatable. That’s because Divine Secrets trades in a type of folksy, empowering cutesiness—and, to be honest, it’s exactly the kind of movie on which the tag “chick flick” rests very comfortably. In fact, it might be the purest strain of this genre to come down the pike since Steel Magnolias.

Based on the Rebecca Wells bestseller, directed by Thelma and Louise screenwriter Callie Khouri, Divine Secrets is blessed with a really solid cast, including Ellen Burstyn, Ashley Judd and Sandra Bullock. It seems to have been made with a lot of care. But many, if not most, are probably still going to hate it.

See if this sounds like your cup of tea: Bullock plays an up-and-coming playwright who vents about her unhappy childhood to a Time reporter. When the article comes out, her irrepressible mother Vivi (played at this age by Burstyn) freaks out and cuts her out of her life, and it’s up to her irrepressible friends to confront Bullock and show her all the trials and wonderful tribulations her mother went through.

Cut to copious flashbacks: the group of friends as children in the South; growing up in the ’50s and ’60s (where Vivi is played by Judd), learning and living and loving and suffering. There’s a lot of spirited, outrageous behaviour, and life lessons are learned with the help of that Ya-Ya thing, a secret society of friends (with names like Teensy and Necie) that Vivi invents as a kid.

To be fair, there’s some solid drama packed in amid the cuteness. And you might even like the cuteness. But this reviewer, who admittedly falls very far outside of Divine Secrets’ target demographic—twice my age and another gender, I would estimate—found it overwhelmingly boring. :

The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood opens Friday, June 7