Tuesday, indie dramedy “The Hot Flashes,” directed by Susan Seidelman (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) and starring Wanda Sykes, Brooke Shields, Virginia Madsen, Daryl Hannah, Robin Roberts, Camryn Manheim, Krysti Jones and Eric Roberts, screened at the Coral Gables Art Cinema in Coral Gables, Florida as part of the Miami International Film Festival. The film is an uproarious look at a group of middle-aged women who form a ragtag basketball team in order to raise money to keep the town’s mobile breast cancer screening unit up and running.

Dana Moe Halley of ShapingYouth.org had a unique take on the film, seeing how she herself belongs to the main cast’s age group. Her review of the film shows how women, especially middle-aged women, are changing how they are viewed in entertainment and getting their unique perspectives and issues out into the public sphere. Here’s a snippet of what she had to say:

“What makes ‘The Hot Flashes’ story compelling is that these middle-aged women get out of their ruts and rise above over their collective sense of low self worth—and even become forces to be reckoned with by their younger counterparts…I may be going out on a limb here, but I also think this story speaks to what I like to see as women’s war on aging. As a contemporary of ‘The Hot Flashes’ cast, I can say that women are really changing the way they view advanced age. It seems that more and more women in their late forties and fifties are making big shifts in their lives…Women are simply not giving in to age or letting it slow them down, at least not without a fight. Instead, they’re looking at it as an opportunity to recognize what’s really important and to make the changes in their lives that reflect that.”

Click here to read more of Halley’s review. get to “The Hot Flashes” official site.

The Hot Flashes

By Monique Jones

Monique Jones blogs about race and culture in entertainment, particularly movies and television. You can read her articles at Racialicious, and her new site, COLOR . You can also listen to her new podcast, What would Monique Say.

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