Every Generation Gets the Book Club It Deserves

Like it or not, a movie about the Fifty Shades of Grey cultural phenomenon is on the way. Diane Keaton, Candace Bergen, Mary Steenburgen, and Jane Fonda (in a wig that my book-expert colleague Kelly Faircloth says looks “borrowed from the romantic suspense author Sandra Brown”) play a group of women in their 60s whose book-club reading of Fifty Shades turns them out in a variety of PG-13-seeming ways.

Faircloth also notes, “Also like all of these women would have read Scruples, don’t even PRETEND. Or Erica Jong.” For real. Wifey, too!

The Book Club trailer plays like propaganda designed to interest the remaining dozen or so people who’d probably be into Fifty Shades but haven’t gotten around to purchasing it yet. There’s a gag that involves Steenburgen putting Viagra in Craig T. Nelson’s beer. Hijinks! At one point, Keaton’s character remarks on her burgeoning romance with a man played by Andy Garcia: “Maybe things with us will go bust…but that’s life!” Indeed, Amen, sister! This could be meta-commentary, etc.