An enticing premise underlies the tired proceedings of writer-director Bob Dolman's dramatic comedy The Banger Sisters: the reunion, 20 years down the road, of two former best friends-played here by Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon-whose relationship was based on their mutual rock-star groupie status. If you've read Pamela Des Barres I'm With the Band or seen Kate Hudson's turn in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous you can easily grasp the potential for comedy, drama, commentary on how things have changed, etc. inherent in the idea. Unfortunately, first-time director Dolman (whose last writing credit was the 1992 Crusie-Kidman snorer Far and Away) goes the staid route, churning out a mildly diverting piece that comes across as a lame-duck second cousin to another Sarandon picture, Thelma and Louise.

Hawn is brash, abrasive and suitably worn as the surgically enhanced Suzette, a bartender at the Whiskey A Go Go in L.A., who has never really changed her groupie ways-she still likes giving the up-and-coming band boys a little something to remember her by. Unfortunately, her limited world comes apart when she is fired. Owing money and at a dead-end, she decides to head to Phoenix to cadge some dough from her ex-best friend Lavinia (Sarandon), now an arch-conservative with two children and a husband who knows nothing of her past. (The diametrically opposed lives of Lavinia and Suzette are symptomatic of the script's problems-rather than deal with any shades of grey, it insists on black and white).

Along the way Suzette picks up Harry, a neurotic, blocked writer played by a mannered Geoffrey Rush in a way that suggests he's channelling Woody Allen by way of Jack Nicholson's compulsive lead in As Good as It Gets. As mismatched a couple as you can imagine, they eventually warm to each other (yes, they have sex and-this being Hollywood-Harry discovers he can write again...). Now that Suzette has gotten Harry to loosen up, she turns her attention to Lavinia. It's not too difficult to see where the movie goes from here.

With lines like, "You've desanctified my environment" (Lavinia to Suzette) and "Whatever you do, you do it true" (the Banger Sister's hideous and ungrammatical motto, and the closest thing to a theme in the movie), it would be easy to dismiss the film as a complete piece of cheese. But Hawn and Sarandon do have moments that elevate the film from the terrible to the merely banal. When Lavinia's two daughters accidentally humiliate her at the dinner table by breezily offering up a wounding description of how they see their mother, Sarandon's wordless reaction is an example of superb screen acting. Hawn gamely pulls off the unreconstructed groupie role, demonstrating, among other things, that she can smoke a cigarette like a real veteran. (A harder task than you might think-watch any young actress try and smoke on screen these days and you'll see what I mean.)

Unfortunately Sarandon and Hawn can't really save things. The film feels as manufactured as its terrible soundtrack, which is distinguished solely by The Doors' "Crystal Ship." In a film about aging groupies you'd think the filmmakers would have at least put some thought into-or spent some money on-a suitable soundtrack. Like most everything else on display here, it seems they just didn't bother.