De Volta às Quadras

''A group of middle aged women play basketball and prove a point.'' And that is, with not many other words, the entire movie. The entire 90 minutes you sit there, there are no other plots, no other events, no other nothing. Just that. 5 middle aged women playing basketball to raise some money for charity. The first half of the movie seems a bit interesting, as the actions happen in different places, the dialogs are varied, but then , in the second half of the movie, things become, let's say, static. It only focuses on the gym where the games are played and that's it. Quite boring for 45 minutes. And even worse, the ending is ridiculously predictable, it doesn't give any thrill. Important is that there are no useless scenes, everything that happens, matters. All in all, if you are just trying to waste the next hour and a half, I am quite sure that you can find something more thrilling than this.

I really enjoyed The Hot Flashes. I loved the relationships between and among the women and the empowering message it sends to people of all ages. There are far too few movies with women in central roles and I hope that people will go out and see it so more will get made. I went with my seventeen year old daughter and it was great to see her cheer for fifty year old women playing basketball. I absolutely support the central theme of breast cancer prevention and I loved seeing it played out on the big screen. Yes the jokes were a little silly and unnecessarily raunchy at times, but it was generally a fun, women oriented, feel good comedy. Go out and see it; bring your daughters, bring your sons, and cheer loudly together.

The cast is impressive, realistic humor and believable underdog sports comedy.Because of typical Mean Grrl bullies,there are a few derogatory sexual/racial comments by a few bullies but it pushes the movie forward.Its underrated,inspiring if not ridiculous.Its a good movie,to watch and laugh.Just enjoy it :)

"Anyone who says menopause isn't the most divine time in a woman's life is a pessimist." Beth Humphrey (Shields) is a mother who is going through an early menopause and is not happy about it. She is trying to figure out what to do with her life when she finds out that the local free breast cancer screening truck is in danger of closing. She decides to get a team of women together to take on the state champs in a basketball game to raise money. I will open by saying that I am not the target audience for this movie. I am mid-thirties male but I will say that I didn't think this was that bad. I did find some of it funny but again the jokes weren't really for me. The message of this movie is inspiring and does leave you feeling good even though the movie is very predictable. The one thing I can say about this is that it would have been very good as a Lifetime movie instead of a direct-to-DVD movie. Overall, better then I expected but I think if you are the audience this is going for you will really like it. I give it a B-.

Go in with low expectations and you'll find this unexpectedly enjoyable. It's a low budget old ladies finding new meanings movie. The acting ranges from good to bad and the story moves at a moderate pace. I actually quite enjoy watching this as a background noise while doing some work. Doesn't require much brain power and has a couple of good laughs.