Reviewed - In Her Shoes: There is an odd moment halfway through this uncomfortable hybrid of a film. Two warring sisters, one wild and irresponsible, the other repressed and anal, finally decide to abandon the pretence that they can bear the sight of one another.
The one who sounds like she might be played by Cameron Diaz (and is) gets caught humping the boyfriend of the one who sounds like she might be played by Toni Collette (ditto). After spending some moments in the kitchen gathering handfuls of her own lank hair in angry fists, Collette storms back and reveals Diaz' darkest secret to the still nude cad: the poor girl is functionally illiterate.
The cruelty on display is genuinely shocking and, as a result, seems out of place in what is essentially a very cosy chick flick. But the enterprise is run through with similarly odd incongruities. Curtis Hanson, the director of LA Confidential and Wonder Boys, has taken a beach-friendly novel by Jennifer Weiner - you know, one of those things with a cover featuring embossed pink script beneath women guzzling even pinker drinks - and brought it to the screen with the assistance of some unnecessarily classy personnel.
The two leads are very good. Diaz, in particular, is to be congratulated for creating a character so irritating that it seems possible - just - that you might not welcome her turning up drunk on your doorstep after midnight. Shirley MacLaine carries impressive amounts of barely repressed sadness around as the grandmother the girls never knew. And Toni Collette might be the best actress working in cinema today, so she'll do nicely too.
Meanwhile, Hanson and cinematographer Terry Stacey do great things with Philadelphia, where the film begins, and Florida, where Diaz eventually catches up with Granny. But the outrageous lies that litter this genre of writing - there is such a thing as a perfect man; all unhappy lives turn happy at weddings; shoes possess meaning - hardly seem worthy of the talent here telling them. No amount of professional workmanship can shake the impression that this material would better suit the patronage of the Hallmark Channel and, rather than MacLaines and Collettes, the more modest abilities of Fairchilds and Locklears.
