OxfordPress.com

Grade: B

Verdict: A powerhouse cast proves that sisterhood is powerful, even when handed a so-so script.

Details: Starring Sandra Bullock, Ellen Burstyn and Ashley Judd. Directed by Callie Khouri. Rated PG-13 for sexual themes, language and domestic violence. One hour, 57 minutes.

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Review: I wish I knew which lame-brained Hollywood market researcher or adolescent Internet snot decreed that a chick flick was an estrogen-puddle like “Steel Magnolias” or “Used People.” Most of the women I know think a great chick flick is “The Great Escape.” I mean, what red-blooded female wouldn't prefer Steve McQueen to Shirley MacLaine?

“Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” threatens to fall into the huggy, tearful chick-flick abyss and, at times, it does. But, as someone who couldn't even finish the Rebecca Wells' best-seller and approached the movie with utter dread, I was pleasantly surprised. Why? Consider the cast: Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Smith, Sandra Bullock, James Garner, Fionnula Flanagan (“The Others”), Shirley Knight and Ashley Judd. Anyone who knows to hire a bunch like that knows how to make this movie — even when it bogs down into yadda yadda yadda.

Sidda Lee Walker (Bullock) is a promising young playwright who lives in New York with her gorgeous Irish fiancé (Angus MacFadyen). With her first Broadway hit about to happen, she's interviewed by Time magazine and talks about her contentious relationship with her Southern-belle mom, Vivi (Burstyn), whom she describes as someone who “has never gotten over anything in her entire bourgeoise, self-centered, god-forsaken life.”

The interview which comes out more harshly than Sidda intended. Vivi goes through the roof. Fearing a permanent mother-daughter rift that could also damage Sidda's impending nuptials, Vivi's best friends step in.

Or, as Russell Crowe might say, Unleash the Ya-Yas. Bound together for over a half a century by a childhood blood oath, they are Caro (Smith), Teensy (Flanagan) and Necie (Knight). They kidnap Sidda (an embarrassing plot contrivance) and take her back to their lakeside cottage in Louisiana. There, they plan to de-program her with lots of boozy talk and a Ya-Ya scrapbook to give Sidda some insight into Vivi. You could say they force-feed Sidda the story of her mother's past.

The scrapbook leads to time-skipping flashbacks which show the Ya-Yas as adolescent girls and as young women. As Vivi in her southern belle prime, Judd seems to be channeling Zelda Fitzgerald as she transforms from a lively Southern flirt to a broken-hearted war widow to a young mother who can't escape her demons.

In the adolescent segment, the girls are invited to Atlanta for the premiere of “Gone With the Wind,” and two notable things happen First, Atlanta looks like Atlanta — before it turned into a plague of tacky condos and dismal, treeless mix-and-match cluster mansions.

Second, the film doesn't try to white-wash the past (so to speak). The maids, chauffeurs and yardmen are all African-American. Non-southerners may think these scenes represent a those-were-the-good-old-days nostalgia, but they don't. As anyone who actually grew up with someone named Necie (as I did) knows, this is the way it was. The movie doesn't glorify the past and doesn't flinch from it either. Yet the picture still manages to make a few important points about what “being just like family” — an oft-used term of the time — really meant. It meant one of our family. That the servants had families of their own was conveniently overlooked.

Callie Khouri, who will always be known for writing the Oscar-winning script for “Thelma and Louise,” directed and adapted the screenplay. She's done what she can to streamline the story, with its grating Ya-Ya-isms and not-so-explosive secrets. And as a director, she's kept things clean and simple, wisely letting her cast take over. And they do.

Dressed in New York artsy-chic, Bullock captures the essence of the transplanted southerner perfectly — the occasional ya'll and a hint of Southern-drawl rhythms without going all Tennessee Williams on us. Burstyn doesn't get enough to do, but what's there, she does marvelously — especially her sorrowful scenes with her faithful and long-ignored husband (Garner), who married her even though he knew he'd always be her second choice. Judd turns Vivi's life into a mini-tragedy, showing us how youthful vivaciousness can slide into manic depression.

As for the Ya-Yas, Flanagan casually steals scenes, Knight gives the word “comfy” a good name, and Smith trumps them all with her ever-present gin-and-tonic and her ever-present oxygen tank, which she uses as a comic prop.

And then there's Garner. What an amazing presence he has. All you have to do is hear is him say, “Hey there, Butter Bean” to Bullock and you can sense the Spanish moss swaying in the soft southern breeze. He makes you feel safe and appreciated — which is the Sisterhood's most divine secret.

And he was in “The Great Escape,” too.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)