In Her Shoes Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)October 4th, 2005
IN HER SHOES
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
IN HER SHOES, directed by Curtis Hanson (8 MILE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL), is a chick flick if there ever was one. But, after a slow start, this needlessly long soap opera finally comes into its own in the last half, set in a retirement home in Florida. The first half of the movie, set mainly in Philadelphia, features some quite unattractive cinematography, especially in the poorly lit interior sequences. The film requires a certain amount of viewer patience which, I'm happy to report, is amply rewarded in the last act payoff, as a family finally comes together.
It features three strong performances by Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, as Maggie and Rose Feller, warring but loving sisters, and by Shirley MacLaine as Ella, their long lost grandmother. MacLaine, who has overacted her way through all of her recent pictures, delivers what may well be the best performance of her entire career with her moving and delicately understated piece of acting as a grandmother trying to establish a place in the life of the grown granddaughters whom she had not seen since they were in the single digits. Hopefully the Academy will remember her work when the Oscar nominations for supporting actress come out.
The showiest of the three performances is that of Diaz as a woman who has lived her whole life out of control. Maggie is thin, sexy, promiscuous and a total screw-up. A human vacuum cleaner, she sucks the cash out of any drawer she walks by. Her sister Rose hates everything about Maggie from her thievery to the way that Maggie steals Rose's boyfriends. With a bad self image about her body, Rose compensates by being a workaholic. As a lawyer at a big Philadelphia law firm, Rose is ambitious and successful while Maggie has trouble reading and can't even keep a job as a dog washer. She does, however, never need to pay for bar tabs, picking up men just because she can. More alike that they realize, Rose collects too. With her, the trophies aren't men but shoes that she doesn't need but buys because she can.
The two sisters' life-long dysfunctional relationship is finally changed when their dead grandmother proves to be very much alive and living the good life of a senior citizen in a Florida retirement community. The two girls were raised by a mean step-mother after their mother died when they were young, but their grandmother slowly begins to fill in for the mother they can barely remember. Hands down, the movie's best and most touching scene occurs when Maggie and Rose tell their grandmother the story of Honey Bun, their one-day dog. The one day that they had a dog was the best day of her whole life, Maggie explains to her grandmother. The beauty of the scene is the way that Rose, the older sister, remembers some of the key details that Maggie wasn't aware of or had forgotten since she was only six at the time.
"Why can't I stop being mad at you?" Rose asks Maggie in frustration. "We're a pair like Sonny and Cher," Maggie explains. "They split up!" Rose retorts. Don't split from this movie as I was tempted to in the beginning. Hang in there, and you'll be glad you did.
IN HER SHOES runs too long at 2:10. It is rated PG-13 for "thematic material, language and some sexual content" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, October 7, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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