"Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" has a stunning cast of performers who repeated get roles despite (or, in fact because of) their age, namely Ellen Burstyn as the once drug- and alcohol-addicted mom, James Garner as the passive and saintly dad, Shirley Knight and Maggie Smith as childhood friends of Vivi who in one pre-pubescent rite around a campfire pledged a blood-defined sisterhood with one another, calling themselves the Ya-Ya's. Determined to stick together through life, the now-elderly women set out to honor their pledge, by getting Sidda and Vivi to make up and be friends.

The plot is a dandy one to work with and because the emphasis is almost wholly on the women (men are there mostly as decoration, particularly the handsome Angus MacFadyen as Sidda's fianc‚ Connor), "Ya-Ya" has been called a chick-flick. However the story goes hither and thither from childhood experiences (most powerfully a scene in which the drug-crazed Vivi takes a strap to Sidda for no rational purpose whatever) to the women as adults that a genuine connective thread is lost. What's more there is so little similarity between the younger Vivi played by the beautiful Ashley Judd and the older gal as Ellen Burstyn that one can't be blamed for confusing the women, who at times seem interchangeable. As for the notion of "chick- flicks," I don't see the point in labeling or separating stories by gender genres, nor could I ever understand the practice of teachers in junior high school to assign summer reading as two lists: one for boys, the other for girls. Don't we men want to know how the other half lives? What they think? What turns them on?

Though Roger Ebert holds that there isn't a believable moment in the film, perhaps the Chicago-based reviewer (like me) has no experience with Southern belles who despite the homogenization of America still act in ways that may be incomprehensible to us northerners. Believability is not the problem. The women are a pleasure to watch. But a more straightforward narrative would have been helpful.