Review: 'Poms' brings little to cheer about

STX Entertainment, 2019.

Diane Keaton looks for self-inspiration in a retirement community, but this farce could have used a major dose of teen spirit.

Grade: C-

Can someone please find a film role for Diane Keaton to sink her teeth into? The Oscar-winning actress (and four-time nominee) finds herself in yet another lifeless, twilight-age comedy, in the vein of her other recent so-called "comedy" duds like "Book Club," "Hampstead," "And So It Goes" and "Darling Companion." in "Poms," she plays Martha, a terminally ill senior who checks into a retirement community looking for solace in her final days, but ends up starting a cheer-leading club that reinvigorates her and her fellow newly discovered friends.

"Poms" also stars Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, Rhea Perlman, Patricia French and Cecilia Weston, but the screenplay (by "Penny Dreadful" scribe Shane Atkinson) is nothing to cheer about. These women are living, breathing clichés and the laughs are few and far between. Older audiences might appreciate some of the tame humor in a world full of R-rated raunchiness, but even the scenes showing these "women-of-a-certain-age" performing cheer, they are not played for laughs or really for anything.

This is a movie that wants to celebrate life itself, but doesn't inspire in any discernible way. "Poms" does nothing but take away some of your free time, time better spent doing pretty much anything else.

Grade: C-

Genre: Comedy.
Run Time: 1 hour 31 minutes.
Rated PG-13.

Starring: Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, Rhea Perlman, Patricia French, Cecilia Weston, Bruce McGill.
Directed by Zara Hayes (a documentary filmmaker, this is her first non-doc feature-film).

"Poms" opens in theaters everywhere, Friday, May 10th, 2019.