a movie review by: Neil Young

There can be very few 'name' directors currently active who put so little personal imprint onto their films, who are so totally reliant on the quality of his scripts, as Curtis Hanson - Stephen Frears is perhaps his only real rival. When the screenplay is outstanding - as with LA Confidential, which Hanson himself wrote with James Ellroy - the results are outstanding. When the script is atrocious - Scott Silver's 8 Mile - the result is an atrocity. Written by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) from a novel by Jennifer Weiner, In Her Shoes is a so-so script, brought to the screen in so-so style by Hanson - blandly shot and edited, and with an intrusively button-pushing score by Mark Isham. In fact, it's only really rescued from terminal so-so-ness by the contributions of his actors: Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz in the co-leads, Shirley MacLaine in principal support; nice smaller turns from Mark Feuerstein and Francine Beers.

Collette is the main reason for seeing In Her Shoes - even though she's arguably miscast in the central role of Rose Feller, a successful Philadelphia lawyer who we're repeatedly told is an overweight plain-jane. Collette isn't particularly plain, and if she is overweight it's only a matter of a few pounds. Then again, nearly any actress would look like a heifer alongside Diaz, who plays Rose's party-girl sister Maggie. All-too-aware of her power over men, slinky Maggie has never worried about where the next meal or drink is coming from - and has also never bothered to address the fact that she has real problems with literacy and numeracy.

Rose, though 'brainy', is racked with insecurity and low-self-esteem: when in doubt, she buys shoes, because no matter how much her weight may fluctuate, shoes "always fit". And when she does make progress with a man - her law-office superior Jim (Richard Burgi) - Maggie can't resist moving in and turning on the seductive charm. Rose finds out. The sisters row. Maggie decamps to Florida to visit Ella (MacLaine), the grandmother she hasn't seen for years due to a painful family history of lies, guilt and mental illness. Back in 'the city of brotherly love', Rose becomes engaged to colleague Simon (Feuerstein) - but realises that she can't be happy until she's settled her business with Maggie...

Just as Weiner's novel makes no bones about being part of the 'chick lit' genre, In Her Shoes is emphatically a 'chick flick' - or rather 'femme-oriented,' as Variety magazine might more elegantly put it. But this is a chick flick with ambition: the 130-minute running-time is one giveaway, the heavyweight names in the cast is another. There is also rather more characterisation than the audience may expect, or indeed have bargained for: Maggie isn't the charming ditz one might assume from the Diaz-dominated poster - she does have genuine trouble with reading and writing, and it's heavily implied that she may also have inherited psychological problems from her mother, who killed herself in a car smash when her daughters were young.

This tragic background gives an extra layer of emotion and depth to the tortuous history of the Feller clan, and makes it all the more disappointing when Hanson and Grant introduce a two-dimensional caricature among a cast otherwise comprising recognisable human beings - the movie has no use for Rose and Maggie's stepmother Sydelle (Candice Azzara) other than as a mildly grotesque hate-figure. And having gone to the bother of establishing the extent of Maggie's learning difficulties, these do evaporate rather quickly and handily in the final act: one minute she's stumbling over an Elizabeth Bishop poem, the next she's fluently reading aloud in public.

And isn't there something a little schematic about the basic contrasting-sisters scenario - one beautiful/dysfunctional, the other plain/successful - each not fully whole without the other? It's more than ironic, meanwhile, that the excellent Collette is being pushed for an Oscar nomination alongside MacLaine in the Supporting Category, when if anything she's co-lead. In Her Shoes is Collette's first Philadelphia movie since The Sixth Sense, for which she did obtain an Academy nomination as Best Supporting Actress - and while nobody would begrudge this consistently fine performer another nod, it would be a shame if this came as the result of 'category fraud' - especially since the film itself so admirably and carefully gives equal treatment and respect to both sisters, regardless of their surface allure.

Cameron Diaz Photograph

Toni Collette Photo

Shirley Maclaine Photograph