Writer Callie Khouri's follow-up to the celebrated Thelma and Louise is a well-made exercise in female empowerment that comes to a somewhat unpersuasive conclusion. Grace Bichon's (Julia Roberts) discovery of her husband Eddie's (Dennis Quaid) philandering, an open secret to everyone in her South Carolina town, is the trigger of the story. While she doesn't hesitate to get some well-earned payback, she also engages in marathon venting, releasing years of frustration over the ambitions she had suppressed for her marriage. The script is often funny, à la Thelma and Louise, and Kyra Sedgewick, as Emma Rae Grace's cynical love-singed younger sister has some of the sharpest lines, but much of the more broad and generic humor seems to have cribbed from the Southern-Gothic playbook. The ending is also unsatisfying since it's difficult to believe in the kind of empowerment fantasy Khouri is floating for Grace, who has been shown to be rooted in the horse country she seems to want to escape. The film boasts an exceptional cast, unusual in featuring five strong leads, and in some ways, the chastened Robet Duvall and the explosive Gena Rowlands steal the film. Legendary Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist also adds to the quality of this interesting film.