DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: extreme abuse of deity, mild sexual content

Rated:

It's been said there is no deeper love than between a mother and her offspring. If that is so, then there can be no fiercer battles between a mother and daughter. Most of these self-centered tug of wars occur when the daughter is a teenager. For Sidda Walker (Sandra Bullock), a woman on the brink of marriage and with a successful career coaching on Broadway, it is still going. While being interviewed for a big-time NY magazine, she lets a little too much about her mother slip and the reporter runs wild with it, attributing Sidda's success to the difficulties she faced growing up. Naturally, Sidda's mother Vivian (or Vivi, played by Ellen Burstyn) reads the article and is infuriated. What begins is a childish warfare between them, involving cut-outs of wills, chopped up family photos, and screaming over the telephone.

Sick and tired of all the bickering, Vivi's lifelong friends, the Ya-Ya Sisterhood step in to repair the damage. Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan) is the beautiful convertible-driving peacemaker. Necie (Shirley Knight) is the moral voice of reason, and Carol (Maggie Smith) is the fiery one who comes up with all the best plots. Their scheme with a little help from Sidda's fiancee Jack (Matthew Settle) is to kidnap her and force her into taking a long look at her mother's life... from their perspective. When Sidda wakes up after being slammed with a knockout drug over dinner she's horrified to find herself in the Ya-Ya cabin on the east coast, a long way from Manhattan. Worst of all, she's not allowed to leave until she looks through her mother's scrapbook and hears the truth about Vivian Walker.

Vivi is a temperamental brat and can be a real pain in the neck sometimes but Sidda has only ever seen her own side of the story. She remembers the 'clinking bottles' and temperamental fits... but what about her mother's story? What about the lives of all the Ya-Ya's? Reaching back into their childhood, the film delves into the secret trials, joys, and tragedies from the girls' trip to the premier of Gone With the Wind to a WWII loss which left her mother devastated. In the meantime, Sidda starts questioning her own romantic side... why has she never gotten married before now? Is it because she's scared, she doesn't want to put Jack through what she's had to face... or is it her problem entirely?

This film has many delightful moments that mothers and daughters can appreciate but, like life, is not without its hardships and dark moments. The movie can be laugh-out-loud funny (the funniest thing about it is how alike Vivi and Sidda are, even to their habit of throwing breakables and pounding the phone in a rage) and yet provokes its share of tears. Vivi's past, as it is revealed layer by layer, becomes surprisingly dark as we realize what she has had to fight through her lifetime just to remain happy. Her marriage with Sidda's father (James Garner) is bland and without romance because although he adores her, she can't give him her heart. Thus said, some of Sidda's childhood is very painful. Spoilers ahead: Vivian was an alcoholic who went through a nervous breakdown, overdosed on pills, and nearly whipped her kids to within an inch of their lives in a mental collapse.

After visiting rehab, she came back home, paid weekly visits to confession (praying for love for her children and her husband) and strove to make up for her past mistakes. The film deals with heavy topics of this nature, as well as drinking (Vivi wasn't the only Ya-Ya to experience life as an alcoholic), romantic love, responsibility, commitment, and faithfulness. It also strives to tell the audience something important: that your parents have stories too! They were once young and have had their share of heartache and joy equally. If anything it helps breach the generation gap. However, one huge problem puts this otherwise thought-provoking film on hold: utterly foul language. These Southern ladies need their mouths washed out with soap. In addition to one f-word, and many uses of 'ass,' 'sh*t,' and 'bitch,' GD gets a regular workout. And I mean a REGULAR workout; it pops up every other word throughout much of the movie.

There's also some mild sensuality and drug issues. Sidda lives with her boyfriend but nothing is ever shown between them. Some kissing intrudes. Back in the 1950's the young Ya-Ya's stand around in their bras and shorts after a party. They they decide to 'make their own breeze!' and jump in the car for a midnight drive. Riding down the highway, Vivi and Carol strip off their tops, to the other girls' horror -- and the shock of a patrol car sitting by the side of the road. (We only see their bare backs.) Carol gives Sidda a drug to knock her out (Teensy has a fit, claiming it's the 'date rape drug'!). In a fit, the younger Vivi downs a bottle of pills and goes crazy. She drags the kids out into the rain, takes off her belt, and starts hitting them with it until the servants intervene.

The children also get sick in one of her flashbacks and she has to deal with a mother's nightmare -- vomiting, coughing, and diarrhea. In addition, the Ya-Ya Sisterhood initiation ceremony involves a lot of cock and bull about ancient earth goddesses and powers, although most are played as harmless humor ploys. Vivi 'prays' to the Virgin Mary, promising that if She'll patch up her relationship with Sidda, Vivi won't smoke or drink... more than once a day. The content, all except the language, is fairly mild. This makes the vile profanity truly tragic, because otherwise the movie has a fairly good storyline, manages to be both touching and humorous at the same time, and could be a great mother/daughter experience. But there's just something disconcerting about hearing Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Smith, and Fionnula Flanagan (three extremely talented and thus-far classy women) talk trash.

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