Meryl Streep’s worst films

Not an accent this time.

What, were we all hate-watching Fantastic Four instead?

She can do it all.

She described Mamie as being “brave and fearless and amusing and free”.

Early on in “Ricki and the Flash”, Ricki (Meryl Streep) gets a call that disarms her before she’s even decided to pick it up. And it is written by Diablo Cody, whose script for “Juno” (2007) set the bar for witty teen-pregnancy movies everywhere. (Let’s hope that genre doesn’t become too much of a cinematic trend moving forward.) But rather than being an embarrassment of riches, this musical dramedy suffers from too much of a good thing – namely, too much of its titular character at the expense of any true plot or supporting character development.

The film also stars Rick Springfield and Kevin Klein and at the world premiere of the film in New York City on August 3, Streep, 66, confessed that she was actually in awe of Mamie’s performance.

This brings Ricki (Streep decked out in black leather trousers, rocker-chick boots, ringlets in her hair and more bracelets than an 8-year-old would wear) from California back into the Indianapolis lives of her family, producing all of the fish-out-of-water moments you can imagine and all the resentments that are well-deserved. Cody, who based the character on her own mother-in-law (a longtime rocker who did not abandon her family), has constructed a beautifully complex woman – a 1970s counterculture siren with a retrogressive chip on her shoulder.

“I’d do articles about my music and, you know, I’m a serious writer, I’ve been playing guitar for years”, Springfield says.

There is a scene of intimacy between former loves, featuring Streep and Kline, that is honest and heartbreaking between two actors who performed similar magic long ago as co-stars in 1982’s “Sophie’s Choice”. And you know it’s all going to work out, and Ricki is gonna grow up a bit, and there will be a wedding where everybody will sing along and, yes this is all terribly familiar. “And it was gut-wrenching for me because I was a new mom, and it was not what I had pictured my life as a working mother to be like”, she told NPR.org’s Rachel Martin. Well, that’s even more impressive.

But we should expect more from “Ricki and the Flash“, and she deserves better than this out-of-tune snore.