Hanging Up Review
by James Brundage (cnull AT mindspring DOT com)July 13th, 2000
filmcritic.com presents a review from staff member James Brundage.
You can find the review with full credits at
http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/60e74e041ca9cd6b8625626f0062219f/c66292008a87ebac88256916001bf079?OpenDocument
HANGING UP
A film review by James Brundage
Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
There's just something really screwy about a family like the Ephrons.
A pair of sisters (Nora and Delia) collectively control the purse
strings of many a woman and hold they keys to the heart of the modern
romantic through two movies: Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail.
Nora Ephron (along with Meg Ryan), redefined delis and male-female
interaction with 1989's When Harry Met Sally. Both are the daughters of
a screenwriting duo, children of The Industry, and have become
higher-level powerbrokers than their parents ever were with a string of
well publicized hits and soon forgotten misses that formed a winning
streak that lasted up until now.
And why did their house of cards come toppling down? Because someone
decided (that someone being Nora Ephron) that it might be a good idea to
make a movie out of Delia Ephron's novel… a novel about (*gasp*) the
daughters of a Hollywood screenwriting duo!
Yes, Hanging Up is a movie that smells of quasi-autobiographical kitsch
hanging in the wings. And burdened down by this fact, Hanging Up never
achieves that all-important low level of pretense that made You've Got
Mail and Sleepless in Seattle pass as entertainment.
Eve (Meg Ryan) is a caterer running a banquet while her father (Matthau)
is dying. Georgia (Diane Keaton) is a Tina Brown-esque women's magazine
editor who steals Eve's stuffing recipes for articles for The New York
Times. Maddy (Lisa Kudrow) is a soap opera actress. All three are
sisters who have to deal with their father's death and an impeding
banquet.
Although I would really love to go on a rant about why it's not a good
idea to write a book about your life and then make a movie out of it
with your sister, I won't. I'll stick to the raw weaknesses of Hanging
Up, which are as prolific as cellular phones in Sydney.
For a film written by two of Hollywood's top-gun screenwriters of this
generation (and the children of some top-gun writers of last
generation), Hanging Up is incredibly weak as far as character
development goes. Walter Matthau's character raises more questions than
answers, Eve is typecasted as the busy working mom, and the other two
sisters are merely caricatures who never really have a conflict to
them. Maddy is so forgettable that one might have done better to fill
in her role by using stock footage from "Friends." Georgia pins her
Tina Brown pin-up but we never get any insight as to why she's the
famous one (other than that she's the oldest). Flashbacks happen with
little purpose, and the film staggers around like the drunken leach that
Matthau plays. Since Hanging Up is so damn busy being the creme de la
creme of character dramas, it neglects almost any comedy.
The result: Hanging Up is the picturesque butchered novel, lying
bleeding on the editing room floor.
Of course, to give credit where credit is due, all of the acting is
fine. Although the film wobbles left and right, it can still see
straight enough to give us some entertainment along the path… just
enough to get us through the film. Yet we never connect… we never make
contact with anything dear to the characters, and, as Eve goes on her
rampage around the house and takes all of the phones off the hook, we do
not feel her triumph… we feel the urge to just hang up.
RATING: **1/2
|----------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|--------------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Diane Keaton
Producer: Nora Ephron, Lawrence Mark
Writer: Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron
Starring: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, and Walter Matthau
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