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Film: Friends with Money [R] 88 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $7.75
Where Viewed: Landmark Metro Cinemas, Seattle, WA
When 1st Seen: 16 April 2006
Time: 7:45 p.m.
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DVD | soundtrack |
On the way home from the Landmark Metro—often rated one of Seattle’s most chic theatres especially for independent films (though it is currently showing The Benchwarmers, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Inside Man, Take the Lead, V for Vendetta, and The Wild--none of which I would consider an independent film, but anyway), I was trying to decide how I felt about Friends With Money. Aren’t movies like this supposed to make you feel something? Happy, sad, fulfilled… something? I sort of left the theatre feeling empty, hollow, shallow, devoid of anything really. Here are a few images that stood out in my mind on that 6-mile or so ride home:
- Christine (Catherine Keener) stepping on a piece of Lego® with her bare foot, long toes, with elegantly painted toe nails.
- Aaron (Simon McBurney) showing off his striped socks to a guy named, coincidentally, Aaron in a coffee shop, the two really hitting it off and become movie buddies.
- Franny (Joan Cusack) shouting about how the only way to get rich people like her to give money to charities is to throw them a big party and charge them a lot of money.
- David (Jason Isaacs) shouting that it was okay to build a gargantuan, monstrosity of a second level onto their little California bungalow so they could see the ocean from the master bedroom no matter how it affected the neighborhood or whose view was destroyed.
- Jane (Frances McDormand) droning on and on about how she no longer wishes to wash her hair because it just makes her arms too tired; and, after all, it just gets dirty again the next day.
- Matt (Greg Germann) loading his arms with every possible toy he can get his hands on at the Discovery Channel® store to buy for______. [himself?, his kid?, charity? unknown]
- Olivia (Jennifer Anniston) trying to squeeze every last, little drop out of a tube of Lancôme facial crème which she seems to use mostly on her feet because she has already begged every free sample tube out of every major dept. store in her local mall and cannot get any more short of stealing it.
If reading that was sort of like the feeling you get when someone runs their fingernails down a chalk board, then I have done my job well. You know me, I really do not like to give movies poor reviews unless they are really, really asking for them…Slither rings a bell in that category. It’s not that the acting by this considerable cast of normally supporting-role type actors couldn’t cut it. They do, actually, excellent jobs of bringing these characters to life. Meanwhile, the directing by Nicole Holofcener is quite good. Leaving, it seems, only the writing and the plot left to endure the brunt of the criticism. As Ms Holofcener gets the credit for the writing of the screenplay as well, here is where I must put some focus. Huh? I have now accumulated several hours in trying to ascertain the message this film was trying to deliver. Some films make no attempt to give a message, others practically break themselves in half trying and fail badly, others hit us so hard with the message it plows right through, whatever the case there is an attempt at a message or, at the very least, a story. Friends With Money concerns the lives of the seven aforementioned people, three married couples: Christine and David—Hollywood screen writers; Franny and Matt—she inherited, he married up; Aaron and Jane—he owns a skin care product company and she designs $800 dresses; and Olivia--their seemingly much younger, unmarried, former high school English teacher turned housekeeper, pot-smoking best friend. Every character in the film with the possible exception of Aaron so ebullient, charming, cheerful, little Miss Merry Sunshine clad in the latest fashion as to pique the interest of every coffee shop-cruising, lonely, older gentlemen in all of Southern California, is so bereft of purpose in their lives as to make even their characters sometimes question what their life is for or all about. At one point, I had almost convinced myself that this was the message of this film: that we have allowed our lives to become so empty, so vacuous, so mundane, so preoccupied with stuff that simply doesn’t matter, that contributes nothing to the social good or advancement of our civilization, as to certainly render our lives pointless. Unfortunately, that hypothesis seems to break down during Olivia’s car ride home with her new love interest from the ALS dinner party her friends all go to for charity and invite her along because she loves the fancy gift bags they give out, and after which she discovers something which I cannot reveal without blowing the ending of the film, but trust me, it sort of weakens if not forces a complete rethinking of my original hypothesis. Maybe the message is that if you are devoid of most qualities commonly associated with being a good person, you can become super successful and rich (with lots of money) but you still really won’t be happy, you’ll just be even worse off because you’ll have fewer things to blame your unhappiness on—people with less can always blame their unhappiness on the fact that they have less. Still, the film provides no clue to how to be happy or reach happiness—except to be the opposite of most of these people. Which made me think of another possibility. Maybe what was really needed here was a television series instead of a feature film. Maybe this was the pilot to a really good, long-running new dramatic series. We met the characters, learned a lot of their hang-ups, and it will take many more chapters to figure out what the point of their lives is and where they are going with them. So, to Ms. Holofcener who counts some episodes of the Gilmore Girls among her writing credits, I say you have the beginnings of a great television series, maybe, but not a very good movie. The movie simply didn’t take us anywhere most people want to go in 90 minutes or less. It had some comedic moments and some beginnings of some interesting dramatic tension. In a television series, however, in the next few months, I could see some wife swapping going on in this crowd, Olivia taking over and building the biggest house on the block, Franny losing Matt to a terrible disease and beginning to accumulate a house load of cats, Jane losing all of her hair and branching into the gorgeous wig industry, Aaron finally hooking up with the other Aaron right under their wives’ noses, Christine getting a morning talk show with self-help guests who will start each episode by asking her how she feels, and the villainous David writing a new show about their lives and selling it to HBO® for big bucks. Now there you go, problem solved!
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Friends With Money [DVD](2006) DVD
Movies Starring: Jennifer Aniston • Frances McDormand • Joan Cusack
Catherine Keener • Greg Germann • Simon McBurney
Jason Isaacs • Scott Caan
Movies Directed by: Nicole Holofcener
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