Review: 'Dreamin' Wild' shows the strength of family bonds and the pitfalls of a musical dream

The biographical family drama “Dreamin’ Wild” is a moving true story of a musician who took a chance on his dreams — and waited 30 years for it to finally pay off.

In 1979, 15-year-old Donnie Emerson and his 17-year-old brother, Joe, recorded an album in the studio their dad built them on their farm in Fruitland, Washington, about 50 miles northwest of Spokane. The album never went anywhere, and years later boxes of vinyl LPs sat in the basement of the farm house. 

In 2011, where the story picks up, Joe (Walton Goggins) built a house on the farm, near their parents, Don Sr. and Salina (Beau Bridges and Barbara Deering). Donnie (Casey Affleck) moved to Spokane and runs a less-than-successful recording studio with his wife, Nancy (Zooey Deschanel), with whom he’s raising two children and performing cover songs at weddings.

Then Donnie gets a weird phone call, from Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina), who runs a boutique record label that specializes in undiscovered gems. A few copies of the Emerson brothers’ album, “Dreamin’ Wild,” have become a find for vinyl collectors — and Sullivan thinks the album could be a hit, more than 30 years after the brothers recorded it.

Sullivan promises the brothers that they won’t lose any money — and may, he says, make them some money. He also tells Donnie and Joe that he thinks the brothers can go on tour, starting with a record label party in Seattle.

The prospect of performing again is exciting to Joe, but less so for Donnie — who worries that they won’t be good enough, and that the hopeful, romantic songs he wrote as a teen don’t hold up when sung by a guy in his 40s who’s been beaten down by life. The tension between the brothers brings up memories of their childhood (seen in flashbacks, with Noah Jupe as the young Donnie and Jack David Grazer as the young Joe), and the sacrifices their dad made to let the boys pursue their musical dream.

Writer-director Bill Pohlad — who made the thoughtful 2014 biopic “Love & Mercy,” with Paul Dano and John Cusack playing Brian Wilson at different ages — doesn’t go for easy sentimentality or a Cinderella story ending. Musical success is far less important here than the relationship between the brothers, and how the years have darkened their outlook but hasn’t frayed their family bond.

Goggins and Bridges give soulful performances, capturing the love Joe and Don Sr. have for Donnie and the faith they have in his talent. In the central role, Affleck conveys Donnie’s ambivalence toward his musical gifts, which he has learned are as much a source of heartbreak as of joy. 

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‘Dreamin’ Wild’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 4, in theaters. Rated PG for language and thematic elements. Running time: 110 minutes.

Review: 'Haunted Mansion' shows turning Disneyland's attraction into a movie remains a bad idea, 20 years after the last time they tried it

With the box-office success of “Barbie,” Hollywood studios are once again looking to their existing intellectual property — the past books, movies, TV shows, video games, toys and other franchises — to save their financial skins.

Before the suits get too excited, though, maybe they should look at Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” as a cautionary tale of what happens with bad IP happens to good people.

This is Disney’s second attempt at making a feature-length comedy action movie based on the Disneyland attraction — and apparently there’s no one in Disney’s front office who remembers the one from 2003, starring Eddie Murphy, which was pretty terrible. (There was a Disney+ special in 2021, “Muppet Haunted Mansion,” which I’m willing to try someday because it’s the Muppets — and because it’s only 52 minutes long.)

The mansion in this telling is bought online by Gabbie (Rosario Dawson), a widowed New York doctor, who is relocating to New Orleans with her dorky 9-year-old son Travis (Chase W. Dillon). But after one night in their new house, they realize it’s haunted by a lot of ghosts — some scarier than others — and that the ghosts follow them if they leave.

Gabbie starts hunting around for someone who can handle her ghost problem. First she enlists a priest, Father Kent (Owen Wilson), who may be a little too relaxed for the job. Father Kent finds Ben Matthias (LaKeith Stanfield), an astrophysicist who operates walking tours of haunted New Orleans landmarks — a job he took over from his wife, Alyssa (Charity Jordan), who died just after the movie’s prologue.

Ben has invented a camera that shoots spectral images that could, theoretically, capture images of ghosts.

Because of Ben’s skepticism, and whole grief-stricken vibe, Gabbie and Father Kent find more people to help: Harriet (Tiffany Haddish), a medium who knows a bit about spells, and Prof. Bruce Davis (Danny DeVito), a historian who knows about New Orleans’ ghostly real estate doings. It’s through Harriet that the group meets Madame Leota (Jamie Lee Curtis), a disembodied head in a crystal ball who knows the spell that could end the haunting — and bring down the malicious Hatbox Ghost (played by Jared Leto, under a lot of prosthetics and computer animation). 

The screenplay, by Katie Dippold (“Ghostbusters: Answer the Call”), hits all the familiar touchstones of the Disneyland ride — the hitchhiking ghosts, the ghost-filled ballroom, the stretchy living room, and so on. What’s missing is a plot that connects those ideas coherently, or characters we should care about as they run through the story’s machinations.

Meanwhile, director Justin Simien is hamstrung in his first major studio assignment, and brings none of the comic timing he showed in his indie debut, the 2014 college satire “Dear White People.” It doesn’t help that the actors don’t connect, and give the impression that they were randomly kidnapped from the same Hollywood party and are being forced to finish the movie before they can see their families again.

The movie does end, in a murky storm of computer effects. Where “Haunted Mansion” fails to generate laughs, it does evoke feelings of terror — mostly the fear that Disney will trot out this IP again in 20 years.

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‘Haunted Mansion’

★1/2

Opens Friday, July 28, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements and scary action. Running time: 123 minutes.

Review: 'Talk to Me' is an authentically terrifying horror movie, with young Australian leads who will be going places

Mythology is everything in a horror movie, because if you get the mythology behind the scares right, everything else falls into place — and the Australian horror thriller “Talk to Me” has a powerful mythology that drives the story in unsettling ways.

A group of high school kids are playing with forces they, of course, shouldn’t be messing with. One of them has acquired an embalmed hand, encased in ceramic and covered with graffiti, that can be used to commune with the spirits of the dead. Or, at least, that’s how we’re told the mythology goes. 

One sits in a chair, gets strapped in with a belt just in case, and someone else lights a candle. The person shakes hands with the embalmed hand and says “talk to me.” If that isn’t enough, the person then says “I let you in,” and then stuff really starts happening. After 90 seconds, the person’s friends try to break the person out of the spell by blowing out the candle.

When Mia (Sophie Wilde), whose mother died recently under odd circumstances, tries the game with the hand, things get weird. Her best friend, Jade (Alexandra Jensen), doesn’t like what she’s seeing — and likes it even less when her 14-year-old brother, Riley (Joe Bird), tries it, with brutal consequences. To save Riley, and herself, Mia becomes convinced she has to cross over again and find her mother’s spirit.

The cast is mostly unknown in America — the exception is Miranda Otto, from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, as Jade and Riley’s mum — but that situation will be rectified soon enough. The young cast, particularly Wilde and Jensen, bring a relatable seriousness to the creepy events.

Brothers Danny and Michael Phillipou directed the film, while Danny Phillipou co-wrote with Bill Hinzman (based on a concept by Daley Pearson) — and the brothers have a keen grasp on how to deliver solid chills. There are a few scenes best (or at least most likely) viewed through one’s fingers, but little feels gratuitous or unnecessary. The terror of “Talk to Me” is well-earned.

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‘Talk to Me’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated R for strong/bloody violent content, some sexual material and language throughout. Running time: 94 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Theater Camp' is a 'Guffman'-like mock-documentary with lots of laughs, and an ensemble that gets the weirdness of summer camp

It’s not often that a movie sets up as many jokes, and lands so many of them, as the semi-improvised comedy “Theater Camp,” which feels a bit like “Waiting for Guffman” for a new generation.

The setting is AdirondActs, a ramshackle summer camp for theater kids in upstate New York. We first see the camp’s founder, Joan (Amy Sedaris), attending a middle school production of “Bye Bye Birdie,” looking for prospective campers, when a strobe effect causes Joan to have a seizure that puts her in a coma — the first time, we’re told in this mock-documentary, that someone has become comatose in a “Bye Bye Birdie”-related accident.

While Joan is hospitalized, her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) takes over operations — but as a dude-bro YouTube influencer, Troy doesn’t have the business skills or theater knowledge to run the camp. The bank is close to foreclosing on the camp property, and Caroline (Patti Harrison), the corporate rep for the more expensive theater camp next door, is waving an offer at him.

Meanwhile, life at the camp goes on. The central figures among the teaching staff are the drama director, Amos (Ben Platt), and the music director, Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), who lead the casting decisions for the drama-loving campers. They also, by tradition, write and direct an original musical each year that the campers perform — and this year’s musical will be a tuneful biography of Joan.

Gordon (best known for her roles in “Booksmart” and “Shiva Baby”) and Nick Lieberman (who has directed many of Platt’s music videos) directed “Theater Camp,” and they co-wrote it along with Platt and Noah Galvin — who shines as Glenn, the camp’s overworked technical director. The script is informed by the quartet’s experiences as theater camp kids, and leaves room for plenty of improvised moments that show how wickedly talented they are and how much they enjoy working together. 

Gordon and Lieberman stay true to the Christopher Guest school of mock-documentaries. There are no reality-show confessional interviews, and never an ironic look to the camera, a la “The Office.”

Gordon and Platt — best friends since childhood, Gordon said after the movie’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival — have such amazing chemistry that they seem to finish each other’s sentences. Platt’s performance here, as a blowhard drama teacher, may redeem his career after the tragedy that was the “Dear Evan Hansen” movie.

Others in the cast who shine are Ayo Edebiri as a newly hired teacher with no expertise, Nathan Lee Graham (“Zoolander”) as an imperious dance instructor, and Owen Thiele as the camp’s quite fabulous costume designer. But the real finds in “Theater Camp” are the array of child actors who give hilarious performances as the camp’s eager students.

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‘Theater Camp’

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, July 28, in theaters. Rated PG-13 for some strong language and suggestive/drug references. Running time: 92 minutes.

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This review originally appeared on this site on January 22, 2023, when the movie premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Review: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' reboots with 'Mutant Mayhem,' where the stunning animation outpaces a chaotic story

It’s fair to say “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” is a matter of style over substance — but when you’ve got this much style going on, it’s difficult for the substance to keep up.

This animated tale is the latest attempt to make movies off of the cult-favorite comic book — by my count, this is the third movie reboot, after the movie series that started in 1990 and the one that started in 2014 (and that’s not counting all the TV cartoon versions). This one is different in that it’s not attempting to be live-action. This one is animated, in every sense of the word.

The animation is computer generated, but the turtles and other characters are largely made to look like stop-motion clay figures (think Wallace & Gromit), but with lines frequently added to give a sketchbook quality, like something out of a comic book. The effect is eye-popping, and easily the most visually arresting animation in a movie this year that doesn’t have “Spider-Verse” in the title.

The animation is so dynamic that the story, as frenetic as it is, can’t keep up. At heart, it’s the origin story of the Turtle family — how four baby turtles were washed down the sewer and covered in a mysterious ooze that gave them mutant superpowers. The ooze also affected a rat, named Splinter (voiced by Jackie Chan), who became the Turtles’ adopted father, protector and martial arts trainer.

As teens, the four — Leonardo (voiced by Nicolas Cantu), Donatello (voiced by Micah Abbey), Raphael (voiced by Brady Noon) and Michelangelo (voiced by Shamon Brown Jr.) — yearn to get out of the sewers and experience life as normal human teenagers. Splinter, however, forbids them from interacting with humans, and he has the flashback memories of threatening human behavior to bolster his suspicion.

Once, on a rooftop, they encounter April O’Neil (voiced by Ayo Edebiri, from “The Bear”), a high school student and aspiring journalist. After some initial trepidation, she befriends the foursome, and enlists them to help find the master criminal who’s been terrorizing New York — known only as Superfly.

The movie takes a drastic turn when the Turtles learn that Superfly is actually a fly — a mutant, like them, with a collection of other mutant creatures in his entourage. (The voice casting for these mutants is impressive, including Ice Cube as Superfly, plus John Cena, Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, Paul Rudd, Natasia Demetriou, Hannibal Buress and Post Malone.) The Turtles also learn that Superfly’s heists are aimed at a larger goal: A device that will turn New York’s animal population into mutants who will dominate the city’s humans.

Director Jeff Rowe (who co-directed “The Mitchells vs. the Machines”) keeps the movie moving, even if the tag-teamed script — credited to five writers, including Rogen — gets bogged down in too many characters to follow and too much mayhem (as the title promises) to track.

Still, the action is brisk, and the animation shows Leo, Donnie, Ralph and Mike as genuine teenagers, even in their masked, shell-covered hero poses. (Casting actual teens to voice the roles was a smart move on the filmmakers’ part.) “Mutant Mayhem” launches this incarnation of the Turtles well, and will certainly spawn sequels to keep the story going.

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‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, August 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for sequences of violence and action, language and impolite material. Running time: 99 minutes.

Review: 'Barbie' brings the plastic doll, and a smartly funny meta-analysis of her, to the big screen

Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” manages a juggling act I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a movie before: It celebrates a corporate symbol of plastic packaged conformity while also being a subversive, proudly feminist critique of that symbol.

What’s equally surprising is that it’s really funny and, at times, heart-warming.

Gerwig, writing with her regular partner (in screenplays and in life) Noah Baumbach, starts with some history, of how in 1959 the company Mattel Inc. introduced the Barbie doll, a 12-inch plastic paragon with long legs, big breasts and no genitals. In an age when dolls were almost always babies, and playing with them required girls to behave like mothers, an adult figurine who could hold down a job and own a house was revolutionary. (Gerwig breaks out the “Also Sprach Zarathustra” to illustrate this change, “2001”-style. It was released months ago, in the movie’s first trailer.)

Barbieland, as Gerwig shows it, is a fantasia of pink, where all the Barbies do all the important jobs — president (Issa Rae), physicist (Emma Mackey), and so on — and still get together at the dream house of Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) for a well-choreographed dance party.

Also attending the dance party are all the Kens, adjuncts to the Barbies. As the narrator (Helen Mirren) explains, Barbie is always happy, but Ken — the lead one is played by Ryan Gosling — is only happy “when Barbie looks at him.”

But is Stereotypical Barbie really happy? In the middle of the dance party, she asks out loud, “Do any of you guys think about dying?” This stray thought freaks out our Barbie, as does the discovery that her feet — previously contoured to fit into her high heels — have literally gone flat. Barbie consults the wisest of the Barbies: Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who has uneven hair, is always doing the splits and “smells like basement,” because of being played with too roughly.

For Stereotypical Barbie to figure out what’s happening to her, Weird Barbie says, she must travel to the Real World. She barely gets out of Barbieland when she finds Gosling’s Ken is hiding in the back seat of her pink Corvette, tagging along for the ride.

In the Real World, Barbie makes the harsh discovery that most women don’t think of Barbie as empowering to women. She learns this by meeting Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a surly middle-schooler, and her frazzled mom, Gloria (America Ferrara) — who works at Mattel, whose CEO (Will Ferrell) and yes-men (and they are all men) are freaking out that a Barbie has gotten loose. (Ferrell’s performance is perhaps the one sour note in the movie, too much like his Lord Business character from “The LEGO Movie.”)

Ken, meanwhile, makes a discovery of his own: Something called “patriarchy.” The results are potentially catastrophic, both to Barbieland and Mattel.

Gerwig and Baumbach take some deep dives into the more controversial parts of the discontinued Barbie product line (do you remember Video Girl Barbie? Earring Magic Ken? Ken’s friend Allan? Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge?) and some of the unanswered mysteries of the franchise — like, where does Ken live when Barbie is alone in her Malibu DreamHouse?

The movie also wrestles with Barbie’s place in women’s lives, and how the contradictions of Barbie — an adult aimed at children, sending mixed messages about feminine beauty and health, and so on — are echoes of the micro- and macro-battles real women wage every day. Ferrara delivers a deliciously sharp monologue about this, in a moment that should evoke as much applause as laughter.

Robbie gives what’s perhaps the best performance of her career — funnier than Harley Quinn, more touching than Tonya Harding in “I, Tonya,” more alluringly innocent than Sharon Tate in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” She takes this amorphous idea of the Barbie doll and finds her heart and soul, and makes her a fully realized woman.

And I’ll be damned if the guy doesn’t nearly steal the movie from her. Gosling’s portrayal of Ken is an astonishing comic performance, capturing the fragility of Ken’s ego and the unearned bravado that his embrace of his newly discovered machismo provides. Gosling does something very few Barbie-playing girls (or boys) have ever done before: He makes Ken necessary.

“Barbie” is also a movie that will reward repeat viewings, as the layers of jokes and references are thick enough that you probably missed a few of them. (I haven’t even mentioned the musical numbers.) Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken turn out to be fun company on this offbeat road trip.

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‘Barbie’

★★★1/2

Opened Friday, July 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language. Running time: 114 minutes.

Review: 'Oppenheimer,' anchored by Cillian Murphy's brilliant performance, captures the contradictions of the man behind the atomic bomb

With “Oppenheimer,” writer-director Christopher Nolan may have finally found a subject — a prickly genius who managed to compartmentalize his life so that unlocking the whole man and his world-shattering contribution to history requires some mental gymnastics — that fits perfectly with his puzzle-box style of filmmaking.

Nolan’s subject is J. Robert Oppenheimer, who after 1945 was called “the father of the atomic bomb.” Before 1945, Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) was a theoretical physicist who traveled across Europe in order to learn from the experts in the field — including Danish physicist Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) and the German Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer), before settling into positions at Cal-Berkeley and CalTech, to delve into a new field called quantum mechanics. 

Oppenheimer understands the theory, and it’s up to others to find the practical applications. One of those others is his next-door colleague, Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), who is building what will be known as a cyclotron — colloquially, an atom smasher.

After the Germans invade Poland in 1939, Oppenheimer and his colleagues discuss the horrific possibility that splitting the atom could lead to a weapon of war, an atomic bomb. In 1942, Col. (and later General) Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) is seeking out scientists to start developing such a bomb, saying that the Nazis are 12 months ahead in their research. Oppenheimer tells Groves it’s 18 months — because the Nazis have Heisenberg on their side — and agrees to lead the organization of a secret lab. Oppenheimer chooses a site he knows, where he and his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold), have some ranch property, in New Mexico. He names the facility Los Alamos.

Nolan’s script tells Oppenheimer’s story largely in flashback, and structures the narrative around two hearings, one private, one public. The private hearing, in 1954, was to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance, over his past associations with Communists and socialists (including an effort to unionize research staff at Cal-Berkeley). The public hearing, in 1959, is of a U.S. Senate committee questioning Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, whose confirmation for a cabinet post is hung up over Strauss’ connections to Oppenheimer — whom Strauss offered the job as director of the Institute of Advance Study at Princeton, whose emeritus professors included Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), depicted here as a mentor and moral compass for Oppenheimer.

Among the many boxes in Oppenheimer’s compartmentalized life — along with scientist, theorist, activist, wartime hero and post-war advocate against developing the hydrogen bomb — an important one depicted here is lover. As a Cal-Berkeley professor, he has a torrid love affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a psychology professor, but they break up in 1939. The same year, he meets Katherine “Kitty” Puening (Emily Blunt), who at the time is on her third marriage, to a physician — but she divorces him to marry Oppenheimer after becoming pregnant. 

Downey’s Strauss (pronounced “straws”) leads a deep bench of supporting roles in this sprawling, three-hour biography. Besides Blunt, Hartnett, Conti and Damon, totable cast members are Alden Ehrenreich as a Senate aide advising Strauss during his confirmation, Jason Clarke and Macon Blair as lawyers on opposite sides in Oppenheimer’s security hearing, David Dastmalchian as an FBI snitch, Dane DeHaan as Groves’ squirrelly aide, and Rami Malek as another scientist. Perhaps the most intriguing side player is Benny Safdie as Oppenheimer’s fellow physicist Edward Teller, with whom Oppenheimer argues about the next step in the development of atomic weapons: A hydrogen bomb, the power of which Oppenheimer believes may be more than any country should possess.

Murphy’s central performance is extraordinary, his angularity embodying the either-or binary of Oppenheimer’s thought processes. All of the troubles of his world — the Nazis winning the war, the Soviets getting the bomb, the Americans destroying themselves through fear and paranoia, the scandals threatening to wreck his career and marriage — play out on Murphy’s face, each one like a math problem he’s determined to solve.

Nolan deploys a range of visual devices — shooting in 70mm IMAX and 35mm film, with the Strauss hearings in crisp black and white and other events in vivid color — to keep the narrative threads straight. The look is luminous, with Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography, Ruth De Jong’s period-perfect production design and Ellen Mirojnick’s gorgeous costume design all contributing. As always with Nolan, the sound design is propulsive and overwhelming, particularly in the re-creation of the first atomic test blast.

Some have criticized “Oppenheimer” for giving short shrift to the countless victims that resulted from Oppenheimer’s work — notably, the Indigenous people of New Mexico affected by atomic fallout and the Japanese people on whom atomic bombs were dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those are touched on briefly, though it’s valid to argue that more could be said, even in a three-hour movie. The broader message Nolan conveys brilliantly is that the atomic bomb, no matter how it was justified during World War II and the Cold War, has given the world the horrible ability to destroy ourselves in a matter of minutes.

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‘Oppenheimer’

★★★★

Opened Friday, July 21, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language. Running time: 180 minutes.

Review: 'The Miracle Club' has really good acting, but that can't save a painfully sentimental script

There are some good performances and large dollops of Irish treacle in “The Miracle Club,” a drama about four women dealing with faith and forgiveness. 

It’s 1967 in the small Irish village of Ballygar, and Lily Fox (played by Dame Maggie Smith) still goes down to the shore to put flowers on the small memorial to her son, Declan, who died at sea 40 years earlier, when he was 19. Then Lily heads home to get ready for the talent night at church, where she performs in a “girl” group with two other women in the parish: Eileen Dunne (Kathy Bates), a mother of six who Lily has known since girlhood, and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey), a young mother of two.

The surprise at talent night comes when Chrissie Ahearn (Laura Linney) arrives in town, just missing the memorial service for her mother, Maureen — who was Lily’s oldest friend. Chrissie hasn’t been back to Ballygar in 40 years, when she was 17, and she’s not happy to be seeing Lily or Eileen, once her best friend.

As we learn through the painfully earnest script — by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne — Chrissie was the young love of Declan before she left Ballygar for America, and both Lily and Eileen remain angry over her leaving. Chrissie’s memory of her departure is quite different: “I was banished,” she says.

The top prize in the parish’s talent contest is two tickets on the church’s charter bus to Lourdes, the French shrine where — according to legend and Catholic doctrine — young Bernadette saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. Eileen hopes to win so she can get a miracle, to remove the lump in her breast. Dolly wants the trip to help her young son, Daniel, who’s 7 years old and mute. Lily is mostly along for the ride.

Director Thaddeus O’Sullivan draws some broad comedy from the complaints of the women’s husbands about being left alone for a few days. Eileen bickers constantly with her husband, Frank (Stephen Rea), while Dolly gets grief from her husband George (Mark McKenna), who’s ill-equipped to handle their toddler daughter alone.

As the bus is about to depart, one more passenger joins the pilgrimage: Chrissie, using her late mother’s ticket. 

The movie saves its heavy drama for the Lourdes trip, mostly tied up in various characters’ guilt over past actions. Lily and Eileen are confronted with how they treated Chrissie as a young woman, Dolly must overcome her guilt over what happened when she was pregnant with Daniel, and Chrissie opens up about an incident when she first arrived in America. Irish director Thaddeus O’Sullivan, a veteran of British TV, lays on the Catholic guilt and melodramatic flourishes with a trowel.

Even with such heavy-handed treatment, though, it’s impossible not to appreciate Dame Maggie and Linney for their no-nonsense portrayals of women who have come to realize they have no time for old grudges. O’Casey, an Irish actor making her feature debut, is a real discovery, playing the guilt-ridden Dolly with tenderness. Bates, unfortunately, feels miscast here, though she tries to make the best of things as Eileen is forced to face decades of bitterness and resentment.

“The Miracle Club” sometimes bathes the cast in its maudlin dialogue — one example is when the parish priest, Father Dermot (Mark O’Halloran), tells someone, “You don’t come to Lourdes for a miracle. You come to Lourdes for the strength to go on when there is no miracle.” Smith, Linney and O’Casey find the strength to emerge above the cliches.

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‘The Miracle Club’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 14, at some theaters. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some language. Running time: 91 minutes.