In Her Shoes English Movie
Director Curtis Hanson has easily flitted between genres, going from the film noir of "L.A. Confidential" to the gritty urban drama of "8 Mile" with rapper Eminem. So it comes as no surprise to find him handling a family drama about the strained relationship between two sisters who are poles apart.
Cameron Diaz is Maggie Feller, the gorgeous, severely dyslexic party animal who can never hold down a job because she's too busy having a good time. Toni Collette is her elder sister Rose, the plain, Princeton-educated straight arrow lawyer with an almost non-existent love life.
Matters come to a head when Maggie is thrown out her father's home and moves in with Rose, only to end up bedding the man her sister is seeing.
Thrown out of Rose's home just after she becomes aware of the existence of long-lost grandmother Elle (Shirley MacLaine), Maggie heads off to Miami to touch base with her and maybe shake her down for some money.
Rose, disillusioned with her life, decides to give up her high-profile job with a law firm and become a "part-time dog walker" and errand runner while she discovers herself.
Oh yes, there are some other skeletons in the Feller family closet - turns out the sisters' mother committed suicide and their father never got along with Elle.
Thereafter, the movie settles into tracking the parallel lives of the two sisters - Rose as she finds romance with former colleague (Mark Feuerstein) and Maggie as she learns about real life from inhabitants of the retirement community that Elle is a part of.
If all of the above makes you think "chick flick", perish the thought. Curtis Hanson is far too smart a filmmaker to craft anything like that, and he is helped tremendously by Susannah Grant's smart and literate script.
Witty repartee and one-liners come thick and fast, especially from the two sisters.
There is also a good turn by veteran actor Norman Lloyd as a dying old man who helps Maggie learn to read.
But "In Her Shoes" is too languorously paced for its own good, and some of its relaxed moments meant to establish the characters could easily have been trimmed. There also isn't enough of MacLaine, who nails her role as the guilt-ridden grandmom perfectly.
MOVIE REVIEWS