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'Bonneville'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

February 29, 2008

The characters in this week's sisterhood opus, "Bonneville," disobey a cardinal rule of family-in-mourning scenarios: Don't mess around with cremation urns. Sooner or later, they will fulfill the laws of gravity in concert with the laws of klutziness. Dearly beloved will be all over the floor, and those left standing will wish they were dead.

Christopher N. Rowley and Daniel D. Davis, respectively the director and writer of "Bonneville," flout another rule: Don't predicate an entire film on schlepping a loved one's ashes to his final resting place. It is very, very difficult for everyone involved to avoid mawkishness and sentimentality. Almost as hard as it is to carry a cremation urn without tripping.

Films like "The Bucket List" and "Bonneville," which is a "Bucket List" for AARP-eligible gals, are defiant celebrations of the sentimental. They exist to quench the perpetual thirst of audiences who feel tyrannized by the leering, Nintendo-drunk taste of adolescent males. These lapsed moviegoers, who have my sympathy, crave tenderness, goodwill and straight-on storytelling, unfettered by the vulgarity that often accompanies an R rating.

"Bonneville" trowels on these feel-good qualities in lieu of subtlety and surprise. Jessica Lange plays the recently widowed Arvilla Holden, who reluctantly caves to the demands of her shrill stepdaughter (Christine Baranski, in wicked witch overdrive) to have Dad's ashes buried next to his first wife in California, rather than scattered in personally resonant places as Arvilla claims he wanted.

Determined to make the most of an onerous task, Arvilla loads her chums Margene and Carol (Kathy Bates and Joan Allen) into her late husband's Bonneville and embarks on a journey from Idaho to California, stopping at those significant locales en route. Along the way, they encounter a hunky gentleman truck driver (Tom Skerritt), who catches the eye of Margene, and a hunky gentleman hitchhiker (Victor Rasuk), who reinforces Arvilla's resolve to do right by her late husband.

It's always invigorating to see these three actresses, even in circumstances this pedestrian. Allen breathes oxygen into the prim, Book of Mormon-thumping Carol, while Bates does her earth-mama Kathy Bates thing like nobody's business. There is much sisterly hooting and belly laughing on the road, along with sighing at the natural wonders of the great outdoors. "Bonneville" will make you want to throw your dead husband in the backseat and see America.

BONNEVILLE (PG). Newly widowed Jessica Lange takes girlfriends Kathy Bates and Joan Allen on a road trip filled with laughter, tears and an unexpected date in Las Vegas. The kind of comfy, reassuring take on human relations that makes cynics want to growl at the stranger sitting next to them. 1:33 (mild language, innuendo). At AMC Lincoln Square, AMC Empire 25, Cinemas 1, 2, 3, Regal Union Square, Chelsea Cinemas, Manhattan.