The MVP of "Book Club: The Next Chapter" is the only one of the four leads who isn't an Oscar winner.
She's Candice Bergen as crabby retired judge Sharon, a book club mate with daffy Diane (Diane Keaton), randy Vivian (Jane Fonda) and practical Carol (Mary Steenburgen). When Vivian announces she's getting married, the four take a bachelorette trip to Italy, so "The Next Chapter" is basically "80 for Brady" with better scenery and prosecco (if you took a drink every time they poured a glass of it, you might not make it through the movie).
Hangout movies with women of a certain age have become a welcome mini-genre, although it may be time to let those women do more than get themselves in and out of scrapes, the way all of these movies do. The actors play appealing variations on roles they've often played, with Steenburgen — who began her career as sort of a new Keaton — shifting slightly to make room for Keaton to be the one who gets to do the charming dithering.
That means Bergen dives into a sarcastic, cut-to-the-point woman not unlike the one she played on TV's "Murphy Brown" and in films such as "Starting Over" and "Rich and Famous." All of the comedy's characters are impossibly rich and privileged, but Sharon is the easiest to relate to when, for instance, she surveys the majestic architectural treasures of Rome and cracks, "I love anything that's falling apart more than I am."
Each woman gets hijinks of her own — cooking with a master, making out with a local, trying on wedding gowns — but screenwriters Bill Holderman and Erin Simms smartly avoid the "Girls"/"Sex and the City" trap of keeping their leads apart for too long. The four women have terrific chemistry and enough snappy lines to smooth over occasional logic leaps like the scene in which one of them receives a text while they're driving to Tuscany but, seconds later, nobody has phone service when their rental car breaks down.
During the first half of "Next Chapter," I kept going back and forth between being amused by the banter and annoyed that these great actors — who should be playing the female equivalent of King Lear if there were a female equivalent of King Lear — weren't given more to do. But "Next Chapter" takes a smart turn around the time Fonda is having second thoughts about her wedding and confesses to her pals, "You're the loves of my life."
You can tell Fonda feels that sentiment in her bones, and it veers the comedy away from the "Where the Boys Are, Boniva Edition" trap it might have fallen into. "Next Chapter" ends up affirming that there are multiple ways to find happiness as one grows older. Romance is part of the picture — Don Johnson gets to deliver a surprisingly sweet ode to finding love — but it's not the whole picture here.
Piles of ready cash don't hurt, of course, but "Next Chapter" asserts that the important thing is to keep your fiancés close but your friends closer.
'Book Club: The Next Chapter'
3 out of 4 stars
Rated: PG-13 for language and ribald humor.
Where: In theaters Friday.