Yesterday, I was so innocent. I hadn't seen the trailer for "The Hot Flashes." I didn't even know this movie existed, which is kind of amazing given my profession and particular beats. When did this movie happen? How did this movie happen? Will this movie be as terrible as the trailer? Please, no. No, not with Susan Seidelman behind the camera and a crew of forty-plus leading ladies. I support these things! These are things I want to see in movies! I remain optimistic in the face of this terrible trailer, though, and here's why. (Let's also keep in mind that the creative team behind the movie usually has little say over the trailers.)

Let's begin at the beginning. It's a comedy about menopausal women who assemble their old basketball team to earn money for the local mobile mammogram unit. A worthy cause! According to IMDb, which we all know can be a lying liar on fire, news anchor and breast cancer survivor Robin Roberts even makes an appearance. "The Hot Flashes" stars Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah wearing some godawful latex makeup, Virginia Madsen as a genially "slutty" supermarket cashier, Wanda Sykes as a local politician, Camryn Manheim, "Human Centipede III" star Eric Roberts, and Mark Povinelli as their basketball coach. As Shields' character tells him, "I chose you because you're a little person, and a felon, and I chose you because I didn't think anybody else would do it." This is not auspicious, but let's forge on.

Director Susan Seidelman's biggest films are about major shifts in a woman's life, as part of that endless coming-of-age cycle that goes on and on until we're dead (and then maybe it starts all over again, but I'm still a little wishy-washy on this point). Her first film "Smithereens" has a dank punk rock vibe that reverberates through its protagonist, a fairly unlikable young woman in her late teens or so named Wren. It's not a particularly great movie, but it's an interesting time capsule of the East Village punk scene in the early '80s, and it sort of teeters on the edge of the No Wave movement. It's hard to pull off an entire movie with a protagonist who's not a particularly sympathetic person, especially a woman. Seidelman's film competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1982, which ain't too shabby.

The next life change that Seidelman tackles is the quarter century crisis, with 1985's "Desperately Seeking Susan." This was at Madonna's peak of Catholic girl trashiness, when she writhed around in wedding dresses singing "Like a Virgin," much to the distress of parents everywhere (and eventually the bemusement of Quentin Tarantino). Although I was much too young to see Susan Seidelman's "Desperately Seeking Susan" when it came out, there's no doubt that its style filtered into my impressionable young brain. I never went so far as to air dry my pits in a public bathroom, but I did rock one earring for years. Its stylized, exciting version of New York City excited me and, I suspect, became one of the many reasons why I moved here.

Although "Susan" has become a sort of kitschy relic of the '80s, it's also an excellent snapshot of being a young wife hungry for adventure who goes on a trippy trip through the city. Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is in or around her mid-twenties, maybe on the far side of 25 and inching closer to 30 (and her Saturn Return, which is a nightmare). Madonna plays Susan, a sort of White Rabbit/Jungian shadow character. Susan is living out this sexy, dangerous life that Roberta envies and then slowly becomes a part of, even copping some of Susan's style. Roberta also realizes, though, that being so dangerous and glam isn't that great. "Desperately Seeking Susan" is more about desperately seeking yourself.

Seidelman's next film, 1987's "Making Mr. Right," was critically trashed and tanked at the box office. The domestic gross was about $1.58M, compared to 1987's top earner, "Three Men and a Baby," which brought in about $167.8M. It had some champions, like Roger Ebert, and in retrospect, I don't really understand why it was so reviled. The marketing materials do make it come across as sillier than it is — and this is in a year where "Throw Momma From the Train" took in nearly $58M — but it's actually a fairly intelligent movie about a woman in her early thirties trying to figure out what she wants, or doesn't want.

The fabulous Ann Magnuson stars as a sharply dressed publicist named Frankie who favors bright red everything, with dashes of black and white (check those Keith Haring pumps she's rocking at the beginning). She shaves her legs and pits on her way to work in her snazzy red convertible, owns her own business, and is generally a cool lady I'd want to be friends with. She dumps her main client, her skeezy politician boyfriend, and is hired to help refine the image of an android who's about to be shot into space for seven years. Ulysses looks just like his creator Jeff, and both are played by John Malkovich sporting a Prince Valiant coif. Jeff is the more robotic one, though, and starts getting really pissed at Frankie when Ulysses becomes way more human than Jeff had intended; his android has emotions, and also sex. The person "Making Mr. Right" is Jeff, not Frankie. Frankie's just being herself. Jeff wanted to make a perfect version of himself — emotionless, able to sustain himself in deep space for years on end without human contact or love. It's a stylish movie, with great costumes and fun performances, completely undeserving of the scorn it's accumulated over the years.

I won't lie, I haven't seen "Cookie" at all, and "She-Devil" in years, if ever, but the latter definitely fits into the Seidelman timeline. Roseanne Barr plays a housewife named Ruth whose husband Bob (Ed Begley Jr.) unceremoniously dumps her for a successful, rich, and ultra-feminine romance novelist. Streep plays the novelist, Mary, whose life turns into a nightmare only marginally less crappy than Bob's when Ruth hatches an ingenious, foolproof plan of revenge. Mary isn't younger than Ruth, but she is prettier, classier, blonder, and skinnier — in short, the nightmare of every aging married woman with kids.

So, here we are at menopause. We can imagine the characters in the films Seidelman chooses to have all more or less hit this time in their lives, from Wren to Frankie and even Susan. (If anyone can figure out a way to outwit our wily reproductive systems, it will surely be Madonna, though.) I am hoping against hope that "The Hot Flashes" will be better than its trailer. Because I want women to succeed. Because I like liking movies. Because being over 40 in Hollywood — the movies, not TV shows, even awesome TV shows — still sucks. And because the trailer looks terrible.