Metacritic reviews

As a rich, gum-chewing matron who tools around in her canary-yellow Rolls-Royce, Flanagan is the picture's real scene-stealer.

Gives us a lot to enjoy and something most studio movies don't even try for: an attempt at the richness, density and sheer contrariness of life.

This is a work of excess and passion, an untidy sprawl of a motion picture that is sometimes ragged, occasionally uncertain, but -- and this is what's important -- always warm, accessible and rich in emotional life.

During one or two comic set-pieces, you can see the appeal that the Ya-Yas hold for readers. But you can also sense, farther in the distance, the more vital film that might have been.

As for the Ya-Yas: They're not as much fun as the First Wives' Club.

Suffers from an excess of material crammed into too little screen time. There's so much story that the characters get short shrift; you have to wonder, for example, what became of Siddalee's three siblings.

A question: If you hire actresses from England, Kansas, Ireland and Michigan, shouldn't someone teach them all to do believable Southern accents -- and remind them to keep doing those accents as the film goes on?

The film relies a bit too much on the humor of older women flipping each other off and mouthing obscenities, although it is hilarious to see the usually proper Smith frantically chopping up a roofie to slip into Sidda's drink.

The thinness of the movie, which is what is intermittently enjoyable about it, is at odds with its sob-sister pretensions.

Khouri's new picture takes all this talent and turns it into the kind of manipulative mush that Hollywood used to market under the condescending label "woman's picture" years ago.