MACK & RITA

Here is the decision plainly. Mack & Rita has a warm idea at its heart — a young woman learning to embrace who she truly is — and it does extol love, truthfulness, kindness, and doing the right thing while rebuking hatred, greed, and revenge. Diane Keaton is game, and the older women of the wine club are genuinely funny.

But the movie earns its cautions. There's excessive foul language, a Jesus profanity, several scenes of drunkenness, some lewd remarks, and a scene where the heroine drinks a psychedelic mushroom concoction. Its spiritual engine is a New Age past-life "regression" tent, and there's a discomforting romance between a 70-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man. On top of that, once the transformation happens, the story runs out of real conflict.

So: if you're an adult who can set the content aside for a mild, occasionally amusing comedy, wait and watch it at home, where you control the experience. If you're choosing for children or teens, this one isn't for them.

Mack Martin is a 30-year-old author turned reluctant social media influencer — an old soul who'd rather read in an oversized sweater than party. Uninspired and stalled, she takes brand deals she doesn't believe in.

Then her best friend's bachelorette weekend in Palm Springs pushes her to fit in with a crowd she can't keep up with. On her way back to the house, desperate to feel young, she wanders into a New Age tent promising a past-life transformation. What happens there upends everything — and forces her to invent a whole new identity to hide it.

Two stars, and here's what they buy you. There are a few minor laughs, and the film's true highlight is the older women in Rita's wine club, whose sass, wit, and humor are about the only genuinely worthy thing on offer.

The trouble is structural. Once Mack transforms into Rita, the plot becomes a string of sporadic scenes in which she interacts with stereotypes instead of real people — an influencer, a stuck-up book agent, a shy love interest — so the story never builds real tension or conflict. And the central romance, a discomforting love montage between the 70-year-old Rita and her 30-year-old neighbor Jack, is as unsettling to watch as it is to imagine. A charming premise, but it never quite finds a movie to live in.

Mack & Rita carries a genuinely positive moral message: embrace your authentic self, no matter your age. Along the way it extols love, truthfulness, and kindness, and rebukes hatred, greed, and revenge. Its lead is a kind person who aims to do the right thing — and by the end she learns that being true to yourself should never come at the cost of the people who have always loved you for who you are. That's worth naming and worth honoring.

But the good is genuinely marred. The movie leans on Romantic elements that treat people as essentially good at heart, and it builds its whole plot on New Age spiritualism — a past-life "regression" tent where the heroine goes for guidance and is magically transformed. There's also a psychedelic-mushroom scene and a passing lesbian reference. Scripture points the other way: our identity isn't discovered in a tent or conjured from within, but received from the God who made us.

The film's longing is real — the ache to stop pretending and simply be known and loved as we are. But that hunger isn't satisfied by self-invention. It's answered by the One who knit us together and calls us by name. "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13).

Mack & Rita means well — it prizes kindness, honesty, and being loved for who you are, and Diane Keaton's wine-club scenes raise a genuine smile. But it's a plotless comedy laced with coarse language, drunkenness, and New Age spiritualism, so our answer is the one we started with: wait for home — adults only. Looking for something the whole family can enjoy? Try our latest family-friendly picks.