So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star-Meryl Streep’s Ricki And The Flash

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Zack James 

Ricki and the Flash, starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline,directed by Jonathan Demme, 2014

Roger Mcguinn and the Birds set the whole thing up back in the 1960s about being a rock and roll star, about pursuing your dream of being up in the bright lights like Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Jerry Lee and a big cast of others who rose to the top as we were coming of age. And later of course Beatles, Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen in the second coming of rock after the doldrums of the early 1960s. Yeah, Roger had it right in the lyrics to So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star that you were going to have to give up a lot to pursue your dream, pay a lot for being up in lights and were going to have to fight like hell to stay there once fashion changed. And a lot of us who came of age in those times maybe backed off for just those reasons, didn’t have the “fire in the belly” to go toe to toe with fame, or lacked of enough talent and stage presence to go beyond inspired amateur night. That didn’t stop a lot of us from dreaming the midnight dreams and our hats went off to the guys who pursued the road and maybe never got off winding up doing some slo-mo lounge lizard act in a Jersey hotel bar, or worse doing weddings, proms and the like. Jesus.      

Notice how I have referred strictly to guys when I mentioned the rock and roll dream because with few exceptions like Wanda Jackson early in Elvis time and Bonnie Raitt and a few others later in Stones time this was a guy dream. Somewhat later that list got longer but mainly rock was a guy thing. Then along came this film that I am reviewing today, Meryl Streep’s Ricki and the Flash, the Flash part being her back-up band at the joint she was a regular performer at and it turns out that gals, young women, not only had that same dream but were willing to abandon home and hearth to pursue that dream just like the guys. Ending forever hopefully the notion that the women of rock whatever its current manifestation will get never get fair play.

Of course unless you want to do a documentary about a female rocker then you need a story line, a subtext for the back story of what the search for fame and fortune, female version, looks like. See Ricki (her stage name okay, nice too), played beautifully by Meryl Streep who gives her all to whatever role she is playing from a despised British Prime Minister to a be-daggled, dread-locked, okay semi-dread-locked aging rocker nursing her act in L.A. (naturally) after her moments of glory via her one produced album, has indeed given up a lot for her art. Just as the story opened up she was called back to Indianapolis (one can see now see why she fled, sorry Hoosiers) by her ex-husband (played by Kevin Kline) to help their young daughter who was seriously distraught to the point of suicide since her husband was divorcing her.       

Her return sets a whole series of fireworks off both there and back in L.A. where she does her regular gig. The daughter is snarly that Ricki left her in the lurch, abandoned her, when she was young. A now openly gay son resents her for leaving as well. Ditto a second son about to be married who does not want to invite dear old Mom to the wedding. In short all treating her like a snake to be handled carefully, very carefully. The ex (Kline) is the least of Ricki’s worries but his current wife, a black woman who has raised the children in her stead and who made no bones about Rick’s lacks as a mother forces her to confront certain realities. Added to that Ricki’s lead guitarist whom she is having a fling/affair/ relationship with depending on the mood of either party is pressuring her to be more serious about their relationship.           

Well we all know this is a Hollywood film so we know this one, beyond some great covers of classic rock hits (and her own best work as well) which I understand Streep learned to play the electric guitar to do (kudos), things will work out kind of okay. Will work out enough to show why Ricki was not crazy to go out and try like hell to become a rock and roll star. Aside from some obvious thinness in the dialogue and what seems these days to be the overweening need in social dramas to have every multi-cultural identity group be portrayed in a film (interracial marriage by the ex-husband, gay son having an affair with a Vietnamese guy, and so on) way beyond he social realities of even progressive middle class American life this is a film to watch. Who would have thunk Meryl Streep could channel the ghost of women rockers past.