Butler's Cinema Scene

Elizabeth Olsen, Jane Fonda

“PEACE, LOVE AND MISUNDERSTANDING”  My rating:  C+ (Opens June 8 at the Tivoli and Glenwood Arts)

96 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Gotta hand it to Jane Fonda…at 77 she looks fabulous, especially when dolled down in torn jeans, tie-died tops and sporting a long, gray-streaked frizzy ‘do.

That’s how she appears in “Peace, Love and Misunderstanding,” a modest comedy about generational conflict and the good old days of hippie-dom.

At the outset of Bruce Beresford’s latest effort, straightlaced lawyer Diane (Catherine Keener) is told by her husband of many year (Kyle MacLaughlin) that  he wants a divorce. Her world upended, she flees with daughter Zoe (Elizabeth Olsen) and son Jake (Nat Wolff) to her mother’s rural home in upstate New York.

Diane must be really desperate, because she has just about zero use for her mom, who is a woo-woo and left as Diane is uptight and right.

Mother Grace (Fonda) resides near, I kid you not, Woodstock, where the ’60s never died and you still have to fight your way through mimes to get into the A&P. She lives in a house where the chickens roam free and where what appears to be Ken Kesey’s old rusty bus is parked out front.

Catherine Keener

Grace is not much for grandmotherly behavior. She smokes pot, has sex when she feels like it, medicates with crystals, is a font of New Age-y advice and is always present and placarded for Woodstock’s weekly anti-war protest, an event that has been going on for nearly 40 years irregardless of whether we’re actually in a war or not.

Joseph Muszynski and Christina Mengert’s screenplay isn’t exactly full of surprises.  The minute Diane runs into bearded, charming Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) — one of her mom’s old beaus, no less — we know her rigid conservative shell is going to crack.

Similarly, the brainy and dismissive Zoe is destined to hook up with the hunky young butcher (Chace Crawford) at the local organic meat shop. And brother Jake, a virginal geek who prefers to observe life thorugh the lens of his videocam, will go all puppylove puddly over a cute local girl.

As you may have deduced, “Peace, Love…” is packed with cliches of all sorts.

But you know what?  This cast makes it work. Almost.

Fonda seems to be having a wonderful time channelling her old wild woman/Hanoi Jane persona. Olsen, so marvelous in “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” doesn’t have much of a challenge here, but is likeable enough. Morgan and Crawford are easygoing romantic leading men.

Director Beresford, who has given us great films like “Breaker Morant,” “Tender Mercies” and “Driving Miss Daisy,” is taking it easy here. He doesn’t break a sweat.

Neither will you.

| Robert W. Butler