Katie Walsh | Tribune News Service The Diane Keaton Industrial Complex is a fascinating and understudied media mini-phenomenon. Once or twice a year for the past six or so years, she anchors an ensemble comedy about the perils and pleasures of getting older, surrounded by a fabulous, Oscar-worthy cast, in which she essentially plays “Diane Keaton,” or a cartoonishly frazzled, overdressed caricature of “Diane Keaton.” On the higher end, there’s “Book Club” (2018) and “Book Club: The Next Chapter” (2023), and then you have “Poms” (2019) about a group of friends who start a cheerleading squad at a retirement home, and “Mack & Rita” (2022), about a 30-year-old who magically wakes up as her 70-year-old self, and the 2024 inverse of that, “Arthur’s Whisky,” and on and on.
Her performances in these films are harried repeats of her charming turn in Nancy Meyers’ “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003), but rather than being ensconced in a fabulous Hamptons manse, she’s usually being thrust into increasingly zany circumstances (cheerleading, a ropes course, beach yoga) to diminishing returns. It’s wonderful that she’s working and seems to be having fun, but the subgenre is such a strange curio that one has to take stock at a certain point. It’s like Keaton has assembled her own Adam Sandler-style movie camp, inviting her award-winning friends for an untaxing jaunt while giving the opportunity to a young female filmmaker to direct a feature film.
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