Susan Granger’s review of “ANYWHERE BUT HERE” (20th Century-Fox)
In this mother/daughter spin on Thelma and Louise, Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman, as Adele and Ann August, respectively, take off from Bay City, Wisconsin, for Beverly Hills, California. They’re on the road in a 1978 Mercedes, heading for what flamboyant Adele envisions as a better life. Ann’s more than reluctant; she’s bitterly rebellious about leaving her small-town friends and family. When they reach the promised land, their first stop is the opulent Beverly Hills Hotel where their financial reality dawns on Ann, if not Adele. In fact, reality plays a minuscule part in any of Adele’s decisions – the most disastrous of which is a one-night stand with a recently-separated dentist whom she meets on the beach. Over a period of two years, mother and daughter adjust to a poverty-plagued life in a series of tacky, sparsely furnished, one-bedroom apartments in the flats of Beverly Hills. Ann is the resourceful realist, making friends and adjusting; Adele, ever the dreamer, just outside Nirvana, looking in, considering an ice cream cone as the solution to every crummy problem. Of course, in the end, Ann realizes how indebted she is to her mother not only for her creative juices but also for her spirit of adventure. Directed by Wayne Wang, Natalie Portman delivers a subtle, nuanced performance as a teenager desperate for normalcy, particularly in contrast to Susan Sarandon’s persistent, over-the-top kookiness. Alvin Sargent’s screen adaptation of Mona Simpson’s novel amounts to little more than a series of vignettes, leaving you emotionally uninvolved. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Anywhere But Here is a touching, sentimental 6. Make no mistake – it’s a woman’s picture. And, if you enjoy it, why not rent last year’s Slums of Beverly Hills, a similar but far edgier comedy?
