Overheard as the credits rolled for Poms: “Diane Keaton can do no wrong.” That may not be entirely true, but the divine Ms. K is nearly always a joy to watch, and she keeps this senior comedy from veering off into inanity or sentimentality more than once.
Keaton plays Martha, a single, childless woman who starts the movie by telling an unseen health care worker that she’s refusing chemo. She moves into a sterile house in a Georgia retirement community and pouts for a while, while moviegoers do the same. Then her spunky neighbor, Cheryl (Jacki Weaver, Widows), convinces her to start a cheerleading club, and the movie gradually comes to life.
It needs the undertow of Martha’s secret illness because what’s on the surface is remarkably shallow. A retirement community ought to be a ripe source of both comedy and melodrama, but Poms sticks with a simple Mean Girls vibe, as the community busybody — sour, bossy Vicki (Celia Weston, ABC’s “Modern Family”) — does her bitter best to shut down Martha’s squad.
The cheer scenes are amusing and less age-exploitative than you might fear, but Poms is a catalog of missed opportunities. The talent-rich cast of elderly cheerleaders — including Rhea Perlman and Pam Grier — are mostly given single-joke biographies, and any Asheville resident could tell 10 more amusing senior life stories just from shopping along Hendersonville Road.
Which brings us back to Keaton, who somehow takes a nothing character and fills Martha with emotion and longing. She carries the movie to a cheer-contest culmination that’s as entertaining as the similar scene in Little Miss Sunshine, and only half as bawdy. For most of its length, Poms is an underwhelming effort, but its joyous finale makes all the preceding lameness worth the toil.
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