Friends With Money

© A.J. Malouin 2008

(Rating: 21 by Al and 28 by Caryl.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al & The Film Snob Rate Movies”)

(2006/USA. Directed by Nicole Holofcener.)
Here it is: something OF the women, BY the women, and FOR the women. Men here are part of the furniture, and it’s over-stuffed furniture at that! Take four of your girlfriends and enjoy the travails of four women hitting the wall of middle-age.

Problem is, we just cannot bring ourselves to care about anything any of these four women do.

Jennifer Aniston is the woman who has friends with money.

One friend, Joan Cusack, plays a charity-function groupie whose most interesting attribute is having her friends discuss whether or not her husband is gay. (The characters talk about it and many plot points revolve around it, yet no one really cares…and that’s Especially anyone in the audience.)

Another friend, Catherine Keener, plays one-half of a husband-wife screen writing team who is clueless about what’s going on around her, decides to divorce her husband, misses him for a nano-second, then finds that her maid can provide everything she expected from her husband. (And, no, it’s not about sex.)

A third friend, Frances McDormand, plays a very successful clothes designer who is sad because there are no longer any mysteries about how her life will turn out, and who also does not wash her hair “because it will only get dirty again.” (Deep Sigh.)

Caryl and Al both predict you’ll get much more joy out of Talking Among Yourselves than you will get out of watching these three friends with money sort through their silly silly silly angsts. One of the reasons Caryl rated this thing soooo harshly is because none of these friends with money devoted any of their money to clothing or personal grooming.

All three friends with money should have used that money to buy a five-times stronger script.

Jennifer Aniston, OTOH, proves here yet again that a stronger script is not what she needs. You have been warned: This entire thing will cripple your senses with its boredom.

(1 hrs 28. Rated R for language, some sexual content and brief drug use.)