Has there ever been a chick flick as chick flicky as “In Her Shoes”? This movie, based on a novel by Jennifer Weiner, hits every conceivable note in the “Sex in the City” guidebook. Fabulous shoes, sisterly rivalry, an adorable dog and lots of heart-to-heart talks.
| Guys beware: A chick flick par excellence, with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as feuding sisters who discover a grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) they didn’t know about. This one hits all the notes, and succeeds at being funny and moving, but the whole thing feels overly engineered.
Rated: PG-13 rating is for language, subject matter. Now showing: tk |
This movie is going to be huge, even if men will have to be dragged to it.
The sibling rivals are opposites in every way. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is blond, svelte and completely irresponsible. She has no skills except looking good, but she has the vague idea she could have a career as an MTV veejay or something.
Sister Rose (Toni Collette) is accomplished and driven, a top lawyer at a Philadelphia firm. Somewhat overweight, her love life is in idle. (Rose isn’t really overweight, even though Toni Collette put on a few pounds for the role, but the movie wants us to believe she is.)
Maggie’s sexual appetite and lack of moral bearings causes a rift between the sisters. As fate and movie storytelling would have it, Maggie discovers the existence of a maternal grandmother living in a retirement community in Florida. The sisters’ unstable mother died when they were very young; this woman is the last link to her.
So Maggie goes to Florida to mooch off grandma (Shirley MacLaine) while Rose searches out the meaning of existence in Philly.
As adapted by Susannah Grant, who wrote “Erin Brockovich,” the movie has its share of conventional comedy (hottie Maggie livens up the retirement home) and unthreatening romance (Mark Feuerstein plays the nicest guy ever, a lawyer wooing gun-shy Rose). Maggie has a guaranteed heart-tugging relationship with a blind professor (old pro Norman Lloyd) to whom she reads poetry at a Florida nursing home.
A lot of this really works. Director Curtis Hanson, who made the electric “L.A. Confidential” and the lovely “Wonder Boys,” wrings as much as he can out of the girly talks and melodramatic showdowns.
While individual scenes are funny or moving, somehow I don’t buy the whole thing. There’s something overly neat about the emotional arithmetic here, plus the central performance isn’t up to snuff.
It’s good to see Shirley MacLaine in something that engages her, and she has some fine, brisk moments as the grandmother. The excellent Aussie Toni Collette, late of “About a Boy” and “The Hours,” is smart and funny as Rose.
Cameron Diaz would seem to be tailor-made for Maggie, but somehow her line readings don’t follow her dialogue. Maybe it’s the character herself that’s off.
And with that complaint, I will retreat so this movie can become beloved and award-winning. If you care about shoes, see it.
Toni Collette (left) and Cameron Diaz star in “In Her Shoes.”
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