THE SOUTHERN BELLES OF HONEYSUCKLE WAY

Y’all come back now—it’s sequel time!

Blue Lick Springs, Kentucky, is where Lila Mae Wooten lived before she packed up the kids and drove all the way to Los Angeles in her 1953 Packard sedan, last seen in Bruckheimer’s debut (Dreaming Southern, 1999). Now that her three girls are middle-aged, they’re right back where their mama started from and ready to raise hell . . . in a low-key, just-folks kind of way. Rebecca, Carleen, and baby Irene have their work cut out for them. Traditionalist Rebecca is up against development mogul Horace Clarence Castle III, whose slice-and-dice tactics are uglifying the landscape at a relentless pace. Carleen is a dreamer and a whiner whose pet-peeves newspaper column isn’t ever going to bring her fame and fortune, but, lo and behold, she’s about to find the man of her dreams: a fast-food exec. Baby Irene has some growing up to do; her punky get-ups and wild ways just won’t cut it in Blue Lick. Will her 95-year-old grandmother learn her some sense? Can granny’s farm be saved from the developer’s clutches? Will that funnel cloud suck up and smash down the trailer park, or is God on the side of the honky-tonk angels this time? Good thing the greater Blue Lick metropolitan area has more colorful characters than a coon hound has ticks—and golly gosh, they’re all here, with down-home wisdom and faded-overall fashions for the whole family! When this cast of thousands runs out of friendly conversation, there’s always a church sign to read: When You Flee Temptation, Don’t Leave a Forwarding Address. And, shucks, it all works out in the end, don’t it?

Meandering, talky, plotless—if pleasant in its way.