It’s not until they arrive in Venice from Rome, rattled by the theft of their suitcases, that we fall into step with them. The sequel stumbles a bit at the outset with a 2020-set preamble featuring tired pandemic material about Zoom happy hours as the book club goes virtual the machinations to get them to Italy are so tortured that as an audience, we often feel ahead of the characters. In the first film, the gals got their groove back thanks to “Fifty Shades of Grey.” “The Next Chapter” finds the quartet forging a new path forward with Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist,” looking for signs that ultimately lead them to Italy under the auspices of a bachelorette party for Vivian, who is now engaged to Arthur (Don Johnson). When Vivian (Fonda) grasps her girls in a group hug and declares them her “soul mates,” it’s hard not to be at least a little bit moved by their bond, a lively balance of pleasure-seeking, hapless adventure and a healthy dose of tough love. It will require tossing aside every scrap of disbelief and grabbing onto a glass of prosecco instead, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t also be a touching story about the importance of lifelong friendships. Season 3 of “Succession” went to Tuscany for a wedding, “The White Lotus’” second season checked in for a stay in Sicily, while Toni Collette landed in Rome to become the “Mafia Mamma.” And now the “Book Club” gals - Jane Fonda, Mary Steenburgen, Diane Keaton and Candice Bergen - take off for a wine-soaked adventure off the page in the fluffy and fantastical “Book Club: The Next Chapter.”ĭirected by Bill Holderman, written by Holderman and Erin Simms, this sequel is even more of a heightened fantasy than its 2018 predecessor. Thanks to a strong dollar and pandemic-induced wanderlust, it’s not just influencers, old friends and exes filling up their Instagram feeds with gelato and pasta. It seems like everyone’s going to Italy these days.

The alchemist book