Grade: C

It’s dismal evidence of the paucity of good roles for women in today’s Hollywood that Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon should be paired in a totally synthetic, artificial movie like “The Banger Sisters.” All the characters in Bob Dolman’s screenplay are writer’s devices rather than remotely real people, and as director the scripter hammers home his clumsily obvious points without a trace of subtlety. Perhaps female audiences desperate for a respite from the mindless mayhem of action pictures and gross-out frat flicks will take it to their hearts–certainly the enormous success of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and the decent returns for “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” show that counter-programming can work wonders, even when a thoroughly mediocre film is involved–but in all likelihood the response to this bit of cinematic treacle will be more muted.

The story is basically about how the renewal of an old friendship redeems not only the two women involved, but those around them as well. Hawn plays Suzette, an aging flower child who transforms the lives of everyone she touches. After being fired from her long-time gig as a bartender at a Hollywood club, Suzette drives to Phoenix to borrow money from her erstwhile pal Vinnie; the two were wild, inseparable rock music groupies decades ago, but haven’t seen one another since then. The fondly-remembered Vinnie, however, turns out to have become Lavinia (Sarandon), the extremely proper and utterly uptight society wife of a rich lawyer and aspiring politician (Robin Thomas); the couple also have two spoiled, selfish daughters, Hannah (Erika Christensen) and Ginger (Eva Amurri), on whom their mother dotes. Eventually the whole family is freed from their stuffy, conformist existence through contact with Suzette, who teaches Vinnie to prize what she was, Hannah and Ginger not to take their mom for granted and grow up a little, and hubby Raymond to appreciate her for herself rather than what he expects of her. The elfin-like pixie proves that she has the power to liberate other repressed people with a sprinkling of her fairy-dust by also saving Harry (Geoffrey Rush), an obsessive writer whom she picks up along the way to Phoenix and who’s nursing a horrible plan to confront his personal demons after arriving there.

This is all nothing but feel-good hokum liberally larded with lowbrow farce and pop psychology, and the cast seem deeply flustered by the necessity of trying to invest it with even a smidgen of dramatic honesty or real humor. Hawn, looking fashionably scraggly, mugs and wiggles her tightly-packed derriere in a performance that’s quite flamboyantly bad. Sarandon at first does her familiar archly snooty shtick, but then has to turn–not very comfortably–into a semi-free spirit sporting badly-cut hair and squeezed into a supremely unflattering pair of slacks. (Actually, she looks like an aging hooker in the getup.) The two stars never really click as a team, though: their scenes together don’t achieve the naturalness and mutual ease needed to make their characters anything more than plot contrivances. Rush is stuck with an even more incredible role, but does his fluttery best to make Harry likable–without much success. Christensen pouts and Amurri shrieks and growls effectively (her persistent need to clear her throat is one of Dolman’s few clever inspirations), but Thomas proves a complete nonentity. (It’s characteristic of pictures like this that all the male characters are either nutty, vacuous, or nasty.) The picture has a polished enough look, and the collection of songs chosen for the soundtrack is fairly attractive. But ultimately “The Banger Sisters” is less “The Golden Girls” than “The Tin Dames.” It’s like a two-hour sitcom in desperate need of a laughtrack.