Book Club film review: A novel way to rekindle desire

Like British films The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Quartet and Finding Your Feet, this is aimed at a lucrative market of retired cinemagoers with the time and money for midweek matinees.

But while our homegrown film-makers tried to create characters and situations their audiences could relate to, this glitzy US production is more of an aspirational fantasy.

Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen play four glamorous and fabulously successful old school friends who have been meeting for a monthly book club since the early 1970s.

One day, hotel magnate Vivien (Jane Fonda) suggests they read the erotic fantasy Fifty Shades Of Grey. It stirs the ladies’ libidos and inspires some late-in-life adventure.

Restaurateur Carol (Steenburgen) tries to spice up her love life with her motorcycle-obsessed, depressed husband Bruce (Craig T Nelson). Federal judge Sharon (Bergen) gave up on sex two decades earlier after divorcing Tom (Ed Begley Jr) but decides to try internet dating.

The racy book seems to have a more magical effect on Vivien and recently widowed Diane (Keaton), who is wooed by a funny, caring, handsome, multimillionaire pilot (Andy Garcia) who instantly falls for her kooky charms.

Meanwhile, commitment-phobe Vivien runs into her handsome ex Arthur (Don Johnson) who she last saw when she dumped him 40 years ago. He’s recently divorced, rich and still crazy about her. Bergen’s thread is the most convincing. There’s a quiet dignity about the way this withdrawn lady tentatively resuscitates her romantic side.

Her first dates are with regular-looking septuagenarians Richard Dreyfuss and Wallace Shawn and they feel authentic enough. But the younger and more photogenic Johnson and Garcia could have walked out of a Mills & Boon novel.

Book Club is not the kind of film you can take seriously. It offers a gentle diversion and its four leads have more than enough star-wattage to keep it ticking over until its wildly improbably finale.

There are a few decent jokes but you do wonder what they could have done with a smarter script. After all, Keaton was in The Godfather, Fonda was in Kloot and Bergen was in Carnal Knowledge. Must “grey pound” films be so unadventurous?