Lou Lumenick

Lou Lumenick

Movies

Dueling divas prove difficult for ‘August: Osage County’

Nothing says Christmas like a cancer-ridden matriarch being grappled to the floor in “August: Osage County,’’ a star-laden, if somewhat wobbly, adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer-winning black comedy that also serves up side dishes of suicide, pedophilia and incest.

Wearing a black fright wig that scarcely hides the ravages of her character’s chemotherapy for mouth cancer, Meryl Streep rules as the mother of all Hollywood monsters — a cross between Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?’’ and Elizabeth Taylor in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’’

Streep’s Violet Weston terrorizes her three daughters and other kin gathered in her crumbling Oklahoma mansion for a funeral supper following the burial of her long-suffering, alcoholic poet husband (Sam Shepard, who puts in a beautiful cameo appearance as the tippling patriarch before his character quietly takes his life).

The only person present willing to call out Violet’s relentlessly cruel “truth-telling” is eldest daughter Barbara — played by Julia Roberts in her most effective, and least sympathetic, screen performance since “Erin Brockovich.”

Barbara and Violet’s increasingly pointed confrontations over several days are memorable, though I wish director John Wells (“The Company Men”) hadn’t shot so many of them over the actresses’ (or, possibly, their doubles’) shoulders.

When a furious Barbara lunges at her mother during the aforementioned supper, unfortunate camera placement makes it difficult to see exactly what’s going on (or frankly, whether stunt players were employed).

Trimmed by Letts himself from a lavishly praised three-hour stage extravaganza to a two-hour film, this is a highly entertaining, if very dark, film with a mostly excellent cast.

Julianne Nicholson is excellent as middle sister Ivy, who has served as her parents’ caretaker in her siblings’ lengthy absence, and reveals plans to move to New York with her new lover, who happens to be her supposed cousin, “Little” Charles (a woefully miscast Benedict Cumberbatch).

Youngest sibling Karen (Juliette Lewis, very good) is an airhead who willfully ignores that her new fiancé (Dermot Mulroney) is a sleaze, even when he plies Barbara’s 14-year-old daughter (Abigail Breslin) with pot — his seduction attempt interrupted by Violet’s shovel-wielding, Native American nurse (Misty Upham).

Margo Martindale has some of the film’s finest moments as Violet’s younger sister, Mattie Fae, who has a cruel streak of her own, as well as her own devastating secret. In a great scene, her long-suffering husband Charles (Chris Cooper) finally threatens to leave unless she stops ragging on her clumsy, hapless son, “Little” Charles.

Rising star Cumberbatch — the ubiquitous Brit who’s far less comfortable with an American accent than, say, countryman Eddie Redmayne — sticks out like a sore thumb in this ensemble. To a lesser extent, that’s also true of Ewan McGregor, also apparently cast as marquee bait for UK audiences, playing Barbara’s estranged husband.

The film is primarily a duel between Streep and Roberts, and they’re terrific together. I wish Letts had stuck with the play’s original stark ending focused on Violet instead of a limp coda that seems like a sop to Roberts’ co-star billing — or an attempt to send audiences home on a slightly less down note.

Known primarily for his TV work, Wells does an effective if not really inspired job with the material — you wonder how much juicier the film could have been if William Friedkin (who filmed Letts’ “Bug” and “Killer Joe”) or Mike Nichols had been at the helm instead.

There is still enough venom spilled in “August: Osage County” to make this drama relatable to anyone who’s suffered through a wildly dysfunctional family dinner — and who hasn’t, especially at this time of year?