Like its by-gone era, 1953, so are its producers Merv Griffin and George Hamilton…but there’s also a reason…this is actually the story of Geroge Hamilton’s childhood. Ann Devereaux (Renee Zellweger) plays a sassy and beautiful woman who’s just left her cheating husband (Kevin Bacon.) With the purchase of a 1953 Cadillac Coupe de Ville she takes her two sons and embarks on a new life, certain her girlish charms will seduce another mate. Problem is those ‘girlish charms’ were from twenty years earlier. One son, Robbie, is as flamboyant as the very Broadway musicals he longs to star in, and her other son George (Logan Lerman) an aspiring writer, is always practical and insightful. At times he’s also overly protective of his abusive mother (she didn’t even know what school they attended when she plucked them from their lives for their silly road trip.) As the story unfolds, the irony of the unknown road ahead plays into the mentality of a mom-on-a-mission who would never think of getting a job, or bettering herself, but who believes a man is the only way out. So she goes through an impulsive host of potential losers including Chris “Mr Big” Noth, Steve Weber, and Eric McCormack. And while Deveraux’s “gold digger” character is extremely unlikable and never fleshed out, it’s someplace around St Louis that we begin to care for her as we realize her behavior is truly reflective of a time when women had little alternative. Finally they end up in California and while Devareux doesn’t get the ending she’d hoped for, she gets the one she deserves. And so does her son, George, as we learn it was really his story all along. Three tiaras
