The Hot Flashes (2013)

Wonderful character development!

Very Cool!!!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This movie is like comfort food to any (intelligent) woman going thru menopause. How many movies can say that? Progressive and interesting on a number of different levels. Real life with no pretense, no plastic surgery. The cast is fabulous. Brooke Shields, Wanda Sykes, Daryl Hannah and Virginia Madsen, they are all interesting and should have been more developed as characters. And Mark Povinelli as the ex-veterinarian/coach? Kidnapping dogs to clean their teeth? Yes! Moonlight rescue! So progressive, pro tolerance, pro kindness. Of course the idea of charity basketball games to fund the mobile unit screening for breast cancer is great, but there is so much more here. Eric Roberts is a very believable character but he was a little obsessed with his hair. I mean, what man plays with his hair like that? Whatever. This movie is specifically wonderful from a human kindness/tolerance prospective. Bravo!

We found this one on Netflix streaming movies. We weren't looking for much, just entertainment for a summer night, and this funny movie worked just fine.Set in the little fictional town of Burning Bush, Texas, but filmed in and around the New Orleans area, Brooke Shields is Beth Humphrey. She finds out that a traveling mammogram bus will lose its funding because the person who had done the paperwork had neglected to notice it had to be renewed each year. It turns out Beth was the negligent one!So she has a crazy idea, if she and 4 others from the early 1980s basketball team could get together and issue a challenge to the local girls team, who are current state champions, and win all the bets placed against them, maybe they could raise the $25,000. A tall order!The 4 other girls are Daryl Hannah as Ginger Peabody, Wanda Sykes as Florine Clarkston, running for mayor, Camryn Manheim as Roxie Rosales, and Virginia Madsen as Clementine Winks. A motley crew, to be sure, but it was fun seeing these formerly glamorous middle-aged ladies get down and play some basketball.

There are a lot of movies that get released that sport a cast of known actors but for whatever reason gets shoved straight to video. Sometimes it's obvious why but others end up being really entertaining and make no sense they didn't get a bigger push. The latest The Hot Flashes features Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Wanda Sykes, Andrea Frankle, Camryn Manheim, Virginia Madsen, and Eric Roberts and is sponsored American Cancer Society but does it make for a good film? The Hot Flashes follows an under-appreciated group of middle-aged women, all former high school champs who challenge the current arrogant high school girls' state champs to a series of games to raise money for breast cancer prevention. This movie is actually pretty entertaining for what it is, but is never really able to step out of feeling like some sort of Lifetime movie. That isn't such a bad thing, but given the cast involved you would kind of expect more. Everyone here delivers some fun performances and seems to be having a great time but the movie itself just seems to struggle to really find its footing. Some of the film is a drama while other aspects are a comedy, but never really commits to either. Most of this film is pretty predictable, but thanks to the cast it entertains in somewhat of an awkward way at times as they try to pull this team together. There are all the clichéd characters for this kind of film and they build up numerous situations, but only some of them are resolved at the end. There are some you just let go or let your imagination fill in the gaps but there are others that have a pretty strong build up and they seem to get lax and rush the resolution.This is one of those movies that will find a particular audience that will love it and others that will probably skip it all together, but no matter which of these categories you fall in, you are sure to be entertained in this quirky comedy. It plays most things safe, but still tries to craft a story in recognition of some important subject matter and the film deserves its shot for that alone.

"Anyone who says menopause isn't the most divine time in a woman's life is a pessimist." Beth Humphrey (Shields) is a mother who is going through an early menopause and is not happy about it. She is trying to figure out what to do with her life when she finds out that the local free breast cancer screening truck is in danger of closing. She decides to get a team of women together to take on the state champs in a basketball game to raise money. I will open by saying that I am not the target audience for this movie. I am mid-thirties male but I will say that I didn't think this was that bad. I did find some of it funny but again the jokes weren't really for me. The message of this movie is inspiring and does leave you feeling good even though the movie is very predictable. The one thing I can say about this is that it would have been very good as a Lifetime movie instead of a direct-to-DVD movie. Overall, better then I expected but I think if you are the audience this is going for you will really like it. I give it a B-.