Beatriz (Salma Hayek) is an environmentalist and new age masseuse. She goes into a gated community to work on rich client Kathy (Connie Britton). Kathy gushes over her due to her work with Kathy's cancer-strickened daughter. It's been a bad time for Beatriz. Someone had killed her beloved goat. After her car breaks down, Kathy invites her to the dinner party that night. Beatriz gets into a rolling argument with the main guest, rich arrogant land developer Doug Strutt (John Lithgow). Her family was devastated when a hotel developer moved into her Mexican village. She objects to his big game hunting and her callous treatment of the environment.

This is an interesting little indie of a committed leftist dropped in the middle of the privileged crowd. There is a good little conflict. Lithgow is unrepentant and I really like his "we're all dying" take on the world. I want more of that from writer Mike White. In the end, there is little more of 75 minutes of actual screen time. The movie is begging for more with Hayek and Lithgow. They could have had a free-wheeling debate. Instead, it goes for the cheap kill and forgets it with a dream reversal. This movie goes halfway done the road and then it pulls over to the side of the road before reaching its true destination.

There have been lots of stories of people at events where they don't fit in, but Miguel Arteta's "Beatriz at Dinner" still bears watching. In this case, the outcast is a massage therapist who has dinner with a rich family, witnessing the rich people talk about empty and sometimes evil things.

There's a hint of magical realism in the movie (the beginning and end). But most important is the movie's look at how development has affected people's livelihoods in the Third World, in particular Latin America. Of course, Beatriz finds the divide between rich and poor just as apparent in the US by having dinner at this house.

A fine movie in every way.

BEATRIZ AT DINNER (2017) *** Salma Hayek, John Lithgow, Connie Britton, Amy Landecker, Jay Duplass. Hayek shines in this dark comedy of social ills as a sweet-natured yet put upon holistic masseuse and spiritual healer who finds herself an unexpected guest at a friend's dinner party which becomes a study in grace and conversation that comes to a sharp point in the form of bloviated ass Lithgow (deliciously in jerk-off mode) whose utter lack of scruples is jaw-dropping study in the haves/have nots in sociopolitical climes. Mike White's screenplay is dead-on accurate however the final moment feels tacked on and unbelievable while frequent collaborator Miguel Arteta lets his star excel with understated aplomb in being the smartest person in the room.