In an unexpected start, the first few minutes of Book Club: The Next Chapter is spent watching Zoom calls as the four main characters continue their book club meetings throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The audience is shown snippets of those lost years and the changes the group faces during them: a business shuts down, a husband has a heart attack, and the group reads The Alchemist.
The main action picks up somewhere around 2021, when travel bans lifted and pods began mixing again in earnest. As the women reunite, Vivian (Jane Fonda) reveals she's engaged for the very first time, and after a series of signs, the book club decides to travel to Italy to celebrate her bachelorette party. Arriving in Rome, the women take in the sites and while they remain physically and emotionally interwoven, each embarks on her own story. Vivian tries on wedding dresses, needing her friends to reassure her that The One is The One. Diane (Diane Keaton) struggles with letting go of her dead husband, literally in that she can't bring herself to spread his ashes, and metaphorically in that she struggles to accept that her relationship with movie 1 love interest Mitchell (Andy Garcia) can be something as lasting. Sharon (Candice Bergen), a former judge, struggles with retirement and feeling useless—only good enough to perform weddings. Carol (Mary Steenburgen) worries about her husband Bruce (Craig T. Nelson) after he has a heart attack, taking on a caretaker role. In Italy, she reconnects with a former fling and struggles with the way her relationship has stagnated.
When their luggage is stolen by two thieves disguised as porters, the women arrive in Venice with Vivian's wedding dress, but without the ashes of Diane's husband which she smuggled (illegally, they find) in her luggage to spread somewhere in Tuscany. They report the theft to a surly Venetian police captain (Giancarlo Giannini) who has a certain love-me-hate-me chemistry with Sharon. After a shopping spree, Sharon chats up a man at the hotel bar and gets the gang invited to a dinner party where Carol recognizes Chef Gianni (Vincent Riotta) as a former classmate and crush.
Considering how tightly interconnected Carol's husband Bruce is with the rest of the group, Carol's friends are shockingly gung-ho about a potential tryst between Carol and Chef Gianni. However, Sharon is the only one to get lucky—although her luck seems to run out quickly as her wild night is cut short when her love boat (literally) drifts into a canal and is boarded by the curmudgeonly police captain. Meanwhile, Diane gives Vivian an impassioned speech about the benefits of marriage and how she feels ready to open that part of herself again.
The group decides the next morning to book a car and get back on track in Tuscany, but get a flat tire on a back road. It looks like they will be stranded in an orchard for the night when Diane anxiously spills the beans that they have to get to Tuscany by morning even if it means walking there through the night because they've planned a surprise wedding for Vivian and everyone has flown in. After a lot of hemming and hawing over how easy love should be and whether this is a sign, a police car shows up and Vivian gets the group arrested after assuming the hunky office is a surprise stripper. Enter Surly Italian Police Chief who has found Diane's husband's ashes and is planning on charging them, but they manage to get out of it because of Sharon's undeniable. . .chemistry.
They man a helicopter and fly to Tuscany, with Diane spreading her husband's ashes from the helicopter along the way. The whole group arrives at the vineyard and after a whole lot of running around, everyone is in place for the wedding with Sharon officiating. Vivian and her fiance Arthur (Don Johnson) read their own vows, in which Vivian agrees to give up her principles to marry him and he says that he doesn't want her to do that. He wants her the way she is and they kiss after being declared "Not-Husband and Not-Wife." (Interestingly, this not-married married compromise is a plot point in the last two seasons of Fonda's Netflix show Grace and Frankie). Everyone is about to walk away when Diane and her beau Mitchell decide to make the most of it and they get married instead. La de da, it's over!
I saw the first Book Club but I can't say I remember much about it beyond the fact that Diane's daughters wanted her to come live with them which would have plucked her away from her friends of 50 years. Notably, the daughters are completely absent from this story. I thought about this as Diane makes the choice to get married overseas, in front of people who traveled to see her friend and her friend's partner marry. I would've loved to see an end-credit scene where Diane and Mitchell come home and spring the news on them.
But, in actuality, I think the missing daughters are emblematic of the bubble-like nature of this movie. It's only focused on the women in relation to each other. No one is the main character, and while that has its benefits it also limits the scope of the roots each woman can have. Only people in this bubble's immediate orbit can be important and the bubble is solidly only interested in themselves and the men they are with. And even the men of the other women don't matter much to the group as a whole. For the entire time Bruce has been around, he clearly doesn't amount to much in the eyes of Vivian, Sharon, and Diane who push Carol into Chef Gianni's kitchen without a second thought. This whole hyper-intense scope that only gives these women the capacity to care for exactly three female friends and then (maybe) one man that they're sleeping with was too narrow for me. I was often drawn out of the story thinking about how boring and weirdly self-absorbed their worlds must be.
Each character is really built up around their romantic relationship status. Carol is the happy wife, Vivian is the reformed single-and-ready-to-mingle gal, Diane is the widow, and Sharon is the reformed hermit. It's frustrating to see a complete lack of depth in character beyond these qualities, but I did appreciate the freedom with which each woman was allowed to embody each trope. The movie allows these women to each be happy where she is, not forcing marriage or singledom on anyone if they don't want it. They're also allowed to struggle with their choices and have complex feelings around the institution of marriage, which was particularly relevant for me.
I'm recently engaged to my partner after five years of dating. Contrary to the stereotype of the young woman waiting for an engagement ring on every vacation and during every fancy dinner, I was the one dragging my feet as we tossed the idea out over the last few years. It was never a question of love or commitment. Instead, like Vivian, I felt unsure over the sense that maybe by saying yes to being someone's wife, I would be losing a key piece of myself, my independence, and the life I had always envisioned for myself.
It's been five months and I'm happy in my engagement but in no rush to actually get married. So, watching the scales of the institution of marriage shift throughout the movie with Vivian on one end and Diane on the other was unexpectedly personal. On the other hand, the struggles of the other women haven't hit me yet and because their character development revolves around these traits, I had nothing to relate to.
I did enjoy this Next Chapter in the sense that I'm a background watcher and I like movies that go to pretty or interesting places. Italy, of course, has all of that in spades. It definitely doesn't merit a rewatch (or even putting it on in the background to enjoy the scenery), as there are other movies out there with equally pretty backgrounds and much better plots. But, still, it should be noted that this counts as a Pretty Background Movie and that does boost the overall stars some unmeasurable amount.
This movie is clearly a fun project shared among the four costars who had a good vacation in Italy off-camera. Reading the script and saying the lines was probably the low point during that vacation because seriously it's bad, bad, bad. Several line deliveries are painful, bordering on excruciating. Even this star-studded cast can't breathe life into these tired jokes, and sometimes I wasn't even sure they were trying. Then again, I don't think I can blame them.
Overall
2 stars out of 5.
End Credits: 3.5/5
There was a cool opening to the credits with simple animations and graphics showing sketches of items relating to each character. After the main billing, the credits rolled with behind-the-scenes photos of actors and crew. I love BTS stuff and wish more movies, if they're deciding to go the traditional end-credits route, would at least give us this.
Soundtrack: 2.5/5
The soundtrack featured a lot of classic hits recorded more currently and sung in Italian.
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