Bonneville

In filmmaker Christopher N. Rowley's road movie Bonneville, the stellar cast members—Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, and Joan Allen—are saddled with a broken-down script cobbled together from clichés and good intentions. Here, Lange plays Arvilla, a Salt Lake City widow pressured by her brusque stepdaughter to transport her husband's remains to California for internment together with the dead man's first wife. In a journey that's supposed to be both joyous and sad, but above all life-affirming, Arvilla's two best friends—one rambunctious (Bates), the other straitlaced (Allen)—accompany her to the West Coast in her late husband's carefully-preserved 1966 Bonneville, careening from one adventure to the next. The trio befriend a young hitchhiker on a family-related mission of his own, Bates finds unexpected romance with a courteous truck driver, Allen's brittle exterior gradually melts, and Lange overcomes fears of her stepdaughter in order to fulfill a pledge to scatter her husband's ashes in places that were especially meaningful to him. Unfortunately, the screenplay is a calculated, paint-by-numbers job unworthy of the three formidable actresses. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include nine deleted/alternate scenes (13 min.), an 11-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, a two-minute gag reel, and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing film.] (F. Swietek)