One of the recurring film tropes for Baby Boomers has been the old gang getting back together. As early as The Group, The Return of the Secaucus 7 and The Big Chill, the Boomers have looked to reunions as a way of coming to terms narratively with the ongoing legacy of their singular generation. These films have become especially prominent over the last decade as Boomers, the last generation to be raised largely on cinema, and one of the most dedicated cinematic demographics, have entered their retirement years. Deftly directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, The Fabulous Four is the latest film in this cycle. As the credits roll we’re introduced to four friends who met at university, shared the same apartment building in New York and fell apart when one of them was unable to attend Woodstock because of a residency. Now, fifty years down the track, they look set to get together for a late marriage.

What ensues plays a bit like Golden Girls meets Grace and Frankie. Marilyn, the leader of the gang, played by Bette Midler, has retired to Key West, where she has become engaged again shortly after the death of her husband. She wants her three old friends in her bridal party, despite the fact that Lou, a doctor played by Susan Sarandon, hasn’t spoken to her for decades. Joining this typology of Boomers is Kitty, a marijuana farmer played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Alice, a rock star played by Megan Mullally. While all the main cast are memorable Alice, who plays like Karen Walker meets Stevie Nicks, really steals the show – she (and Mullally) seem mildly baked for the entire narrative. All of the women are slightly out of time but also comfortable in the current time, to greater and lesser degrees, from Lou, who threatens “Don’t you quote Joan Didion to me!” to Marilyn, who proudly announces that TikTok is “perfect for women our age!” as she shares her twerking routines with the world.

At its core, Golden Girls revolved around the last generation of women who were unequivocally expected to give everything to their families, only to find themselves jettisoned and largely left to fend for themselves in old age. The Fabulous Four are a generation or two younger but some of those same tensions remain, as the women here are all coming to terms, in one way or another, with the fact that counterculture didn’t deliver ongoing communitarian living – or at least didn’t offer it for older women. At its best, the film plays as an effort to recapture the breezy communality that bonded Lou, Marilyn, Kitty and Alice in the first place. Narratively, this means recapitulating their shared friendship as it stood just before Marilyn went to Woodstock (where she hooked up with Lou’s boyfriend, who became her husband); or, alternatively, to imagine their mutual friendship as it might have looked if Lou had gone to Woodstock, and the four had drawn on the festival’s vibrations in tandem.

Like Book Club 2, The Fabulous Four deals with this quandary by ending with a kind of anti-marriage. Only when they are walking down the aisle do Marilyn and her fiancée realise that they have rushed into it and that they just want to be friends, or friends with benefits: “Guess what everybody – I’m not getting married. Isn’t that fantastic!” “We came to our senses at the same moment – how often does that happen?” Lou also receives an offer in lieu of marriage, as a local doctor takes a shine to her and extends an open invitation to join his medical practice. This dissolution of marriage concludes the film, as the escalating yacht rock vibes (Michael Bolton appears at one point) see Midler and Ralph singing “I Can See Clearly Now” as the four women dance, finding in choreography the communitarianism they seek.

Unfortunately, the best moments of The Fabulous Four – which are variously hilarious, melancholy and pensive – are let down by a fairly average script. The first half is the strongest, when the foursome are basically engaged in hijinks around Key West, but even here there’s room for more extended and engaging episodes. At times it feels like the script leans too heavily on the cast, or doesn’t give them enough range, condemning them to effectively playing their own screen personae, or forcing them to find a way to express their distinctive comic tics outside of the scrip (again, Mullally is the strongest here, looking at every scene awry and filling the connective tissue between dialogue with her trademark murmurs, vocalisations and sing-song sounds, another throwback to Karen Walker). A slight patina of presumed senility hangs over the proceedings – you can’t help but wish that the film spoke more urgently and earnestly to its aged audience, and gave them a little more comic credit; there’s a rambunctious picaresque aged Boomer film that’s just waiting, begging to be made.