Book Club 2 review – Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton terrorise Europe in dismal sequel

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Get our The Life Cinematic email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy ​​I doubt the success of 2018’s Book Club had all that much to do with its story – four older women rediscovering their sexuality by giggling over mentions of butt plugs in Fifty Shades of Grey – as it did the simple pleasure of watching Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen drink white wine and hang out in the most expensive kitchen you’ve ever set eyes upon. The quartet continue their book club over Zoom, all of it filmed at such improbable angles you’ll be left questioning where exactly in the room they were balancing all these phones and tablets – and how many professional lighting set-ups they just happened to have lying around. Each of these narrative strands reach their inevitable conclusion when the group decide to take their “trip that never was” to Tuscany, a holiday put aside many decades ago when Diane unexpectedly got pregnant. It’s all an unwelcome distraction from what should have been the main point of The Next Chapter: four screen legends, whose collective charisma could power the sun, having a whale of a time.