COMIC DRAMA, 1hr 48min
STARRING: Renée Zellweger, Logan Lerman, Kevin Bacon, Mark Rendall
Mama dearest: from left, Rendall, Zellweger and Lerman
If there’s anything worse than being a suddenly single, on-the-make mother of two teenage boys in 1953, it’s being the boys themselves. When Ann Devereaux (Zellweger) catches her swinging bandleader husband doing just that with another woman in their ritzy-ritz New York apartment, she takes her sons (Lerman and Rendall) and heads off in a flashy new convertible for the husband-hunting, cross-country drive of their lives. She wasn’t much of a mama when cashed-up and fancy free, but fast running out of doh-ray-me in an era that mostly chains women to their men and their kitchens, Ann and her boys learn resourcefulness and love the hard way.
Zellweger as Ann is a platinum-blonde original Barbie with a stayer’s spine and voice like a tube of musk Lifesavers. She’s a honey, and director Richard Loncraine (Wimbledon) brings such a lightness of spirit to her misfortunes — based on the early life of actor George “His Tanship” Hamilton — that as low as they may go, it’s as plain as a sunny day that the Devereaux clan will bob back up and up.
