Sister act has heart and sole
It is inscribed in the book of family life, and perhaps also in the DNA, that siblings are opposites. If the elder is obedient, the younger is rebellious. If one is funny, the other is a stiff. As night follows day, playgirl follows workaholic in the birth order. It is so because the family is a system in which every member has an assigned - and complementary - role.
It is inscribed in the book of family life, and perhaps also in the DNA, that siblings are opposites.
If the elder is obedient, the younger is rebellious. If one is funny, the other is a stiff. As night follows day, playgirl follows workaholic in the birth order. It is so because the family is a system in which every member has an assigned - and complementary - role.
So it is with Rose and Maggie Feller, sibs in the appealing dramedy In Her Shoes, starring Philadelphia as the City of Sisterly Love/Hate, Toni Collette as the brainiac frump, Cameron Diaz the semiliterate man-trap, and Shirley MacLaine as their widowed grandma, pent-up and penitent.
Based on the best-seller by Jennifer Weiner, erstwhile Inquirer colleague, the material has been toned and buffed by screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) and director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) into a rollicking, mascara-smearing, intergenerational coed crowd-pleaser. Imagine Sex and the City negotiating Terms of Endearment with The Golden Girls.
Although slick, the film preserves the edge and heart of the story about sisters, each of whom excels in the one area where the other is an abject failure.
As Hanson establishes in a lively opening sequence, Rose (Collette) is an overtime-working lawyer who hasn't had a date in months, while Maggie (Diaz) is a party girl who hasn't held a job for more than a week. They are thesis and antithesis without common ground except for parentage and shoe size.
Collette, a consummate actress who tops herself with every successive performance, plays forlorn Rose like a boarded-up building with a "Do Not Enter" sign nailed to its door. Diaz's Maggie is the long-legged blonde whose neon smile flashes "Open 24 hours."
Rose lives entirely in her head and Maggie entirely in her body. Their destiny in this scenic, funny and painful ride is to crash through those emotional roadblocks inhibiting them from living in both. Will Rose crack a smile? Will Maggie crack a book? (Certainly she can't while Hanson's camera caresses her mile-long legs.)
When their father's wife ("the Stepmonster") boots Maggie from the family home, the reckless younger sib begs to crash on the couch of reliable Rose. Living under the same roof restimulates all the old insecurities and resentments. Maggie makes Rose feel fat. Rose makes Maggie feel stupid.
Hanson treads lightly over the emotional land mines that make their relations so potentially explosive. Although all three leads, especially Colette and MacLaine, expose the marrow of their characters, the movie is more focused on the shiny veneer than those knots beneath. For even when the sisters' unresolved jealousy boils over, as it inevitably does when the smart one tosses off droll one-liners and the pretty one tosses her locks, the film looks terrific.
The cinegenic, eternal-autumn bricks and browns of Philadelphia are across the color wheel from the eternal-spring beiges and greens of the Florida retirement community where Maggie flees to long-lost grandmother Ella (MacLaine).
How much do I love MacLaine in this movie? Ella, her best role since Aurora in Terms of Endearment, is Aurora's opposite: a self-reliant, self-contained widow who sublimates her control-freak instincts into helping those who can't help themselves, including Maggie, who initially sees Ella as a meal ticket.
For the thesis-antithesis sisters, Ella is the synthesis, the one who reveals the crucial missing piece of the family drama. Reconnecting with the family elder enables the sisters finally to walk in each other's sandals, to get on with their lives instead of remaining stuck in self-assigned ruts as the outsider who imagines everyone else is an insider.
Paradoxically, the resolution of Hanson's film (which also boasts fine work by Mark Feuerstein as Rose's admirer and Jerry Adler as Ella's swain) is both rushed and lax, softer than this flinty material warrants.
Still, by the film's end you have to agree, to paraphrase an e.e. cummings poem that has a prominent role, that the movie carries you in its heart. And, we may add, also in its belly, courtesy of the repeated and deserved plugs for Philadelphia's Jamaican Jerk Hut.
Contact movie critic Carrie Rickey at 215-854-5402 or crickey@phillynews.com.
Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/carrierickey.
In Her Shoes *** (out of four stars)
Produced by Lisa Ellzey, Carol Fenelon, Curtis Hanson and Ridley Scott, directed by Curtis Hanson, written by Susannah Grant, based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner, photography by Terry Stacey, music by Mark Isham, distributed by Twentieth Century Fox.
Running time: 2 hours, 10 mins.
Maggie Feller. . . Cameron Diaz
Rose Feller. . . Toni Collette
Ella Hirsch. . . Shirley MacLaine
Simon Stein. . . Mark Feuerstein
Lewis Feldman. . . Jerry Adler
Parent's guide: PG-13 (sexual situations, profanity)
Playing at: area theaters
