"In Her Shoes" is a mostly successful effort at sustaining a bittersweet comedy about imperfect adult family members affecting each other as they learn to live with each other by growing and changing. The film well demonstrates that the way people interact with the world is based on how they learned to interact as children with their immediate family members so that we are still those children inside.
Director Curtis Hanson is in his "Wonder Boys" territory, but this time focusing, atypically for him, on the women. His quick back and forth editing on the two sisters' parallel lives keeps the pacing brisk and rooted in some realism. His facility with cityscapes works well to establish the sisters in their separate environs, particularly Cameron Diaz as she lurches, on the titular heels, from one dark disaster to the next, particular with men.
The acting makes up for what are on the surface quizzical casting choices. Diaz and Toni Colette are only believable visually as sisters in the sense that they both are females; I expected the Big Family Secret Revelations to be that they had different mothers, especially when family members comment how much Diaz looks like the mother but the photos sure don't reflect that or maybe that she will have inherited another ominous similarity from her mother. But they manage to establish a rapport of once closeness that's fraying apart, though the past intimacy is only implied.
I suppose it's intentional that Colette blends more into her scenery, as a literal wallflower, as she likes playing these supposed Plain Janes (as in "Muriel's Wedding," "Clockwatchers" and "About A Boy") and here she has claimed to have gained 28 pounds for the role so that the family can rib her "Rose Feller" about her weight but she looked normal to me and only the scraggly brown hair in her face and clunky glasses telegraphed that this was a movie star playing ugly duckling.
I would have liked more evidence that she was not a mouse in her lawyer skills, but we don't really see a demonstration of her competence to contrast with Diaz's floundering but sexy "Maggie Feller" as they gradually cross-over how they each gain confidence to face their pasts and forge a new future together. I suppose there's some sort of feminist message about the advantages of entrepreneurship for women.
Beyond the opening voice-over narrative, the relationships are developed very well visually. I particularly liked how Mark Feuerstein's "Simon Stein" is believably introduced and evolved into the story line as a romantic interest. Unlike the cardboard males in most chick flicks, he seems like a real, three-dimensional guy who is endearingly trying to make a connection with a colleague. It is not just due to Grant's adaptation of Weiner's novel that he manages to be not quite hunky but cute and appealing, especially in a charming use of a stereotyped romance novel for seduction (though how his character stays thin when restaurant eating is his #1 hobby is the magic of the movies), and even though wearing glasses he is not a push-over even through to the conclusion -- I really felt for him when "Rose" hurts his feelings. But then unlike most chick flicks, even the guys who do bad things get to explain their own hang-ups.
Shirley MacLaine is literally playing her "Terms of Endearment" character 23 years later, with only a slight change in the post-story line. By bringing that past association with her, we believe more about her interactions with her son-in-law and grandchildren than demonstrated in this script. I liked the gradualness of her developing rapport with Diaz.
The candy-colored, sterile production design around her Del Ray, FL retirement community is a marvelous contrast to the wintry messy Philly setting, though there are too many easy "Golden Girls"-type jokes.
Hanson commendably resists the usual chick flick tendency to string together pop tracks until over halfway through, and here the Jamaican songs thematically refer to a key scene and are even mostly by the original performers (though I was surprised that he didn't use a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Sitting Here In Limbo" that would have changed the gender.)
The other pop culture in jokes are amusing - the gathering around the TV to watch the also Jimmy Choo shoe-obsessed "Sex and the City" (which Feuerstein guested on); Diaz's character not being able to read a line about Eminem, of Hanson's "8 Mile"; and Colette's character setting a "Rocky"-like goal of running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum. The poetry reading is incorporated a bit heavy-handed but at least it's believable that Norman Lloyd is a retired English professor who could patiently introduce the joy of reading poetry to someone who has never read it before.
What is jarring was the choice to keep the Jewish context of the novel even with the casting of Ken Howard, MacLaine, Colette and Diaz, who are individually not given any Jewish shtick or personal connection. All the secondary characters are still made explicitly, and unnecessarily, Jewish -- we see "Scott"s bar mitzvah photo, his dad makes a "mazel tov" toast and a key scene is a Jewish ritual; the residents of the retirement community have specifically Jewish names and inflections, particularly the best friend "Mrs. Lefkowitz"; and the evil Step Mother is a caricature of a Jewish Mother bragging about her "My Marsha" daughter who gets a spiteful comeuppance that's odd given that the only way I could absorb the main characters was by assuming that they were gentiles who had married into a Jewish family or children of an inter-faith marriage. The only justification I could think of was to have a warm ethnic family surroundings a la "Big Fat Greek Wedding," but the importance of family and friends could be demonstrated with surroundings that matched the lead actors more credibly.
Director Curtis Hanson is in his "Wonder Boys" territory, but this time focusing, atypically for him, on the women. His quick back and forth editing on the two sisters' parallel lives keeps the pacing brisk and rooted in some realism. His facility with cityscapes works well to establish the sisters in their separate environs, particularly Cameron Diaz as she lurches, on the titular heels, from one dark disaster to the next, particular with men.
The acting makes up for what are on the surface quizzical casting choices. Diaz and Toni Colette are only believable visually as sisters in the sense that they both are females; I expected the Big Family Secret Revelations to be that they had different mothers, especially when family members comment how much Diaz looks like the mother but the photos sure don't reflect that or maybe that she will have inherited another ominous similarity from her mother. But they manage to establish a rapport of once closeness that's fraying apart, though the past intimacy is only implied.
I suppose it's intentional that Colette blends more into her scenery, as a literal wallflower, as she likes playing these supposed Plain Janes (as in "Muriel's Wedding," "Clockwatchers" and "About A Boy") and here she has claimed to have gained 28 pounds for the role so that the family can rib her "Rose Feller" about her weight but she looked normal to me and only the scraggly brown hair in her face and clunky glasses telegraphed that this was a movie star playing ugly duckling.
I would have liked more evidence that she was not a mouse in her lawyer skills, but we don't really see a demonstration of her competence to contrast with Diaz's floundering but sexy "Maggie Feller" as they gradually cross-over how they each gain confidence to face their pasts and forge a new future together. I suppose there's some sort of feminist message about the advantages of entrepreneurship for women.
Beyond the opening voice-over narrative, the relationships are developed very well visually. I particularly liked how Mark Feuerstein's "Simon Stein" is believably introduced and evolved into the story line as a romantic interest. Unlike the cardboard males in most chick flicks, he seems like a real, three-dimensional guy who is endearingly trying to make a connection with a colleague. It is not just due to Grant's adaptation of Weiner's novel that he manages to be not quite hunky but cute and appealing, especially in a charming use of a stereotyped romance novel for seduction (though how his character stays thin when restaurant eating is his #1 hobby is the magic of the movies), and even though wearing glasses he is not a push-over even through to the conclusion -- I really felt for him when "Rose" hurts his feelings. But then unlike most chick flicks, even the guys who do bad things get to explain their own hang-ups.
Shirley MacLaine is literally playing her "Terms of Endearment" character 23 years later, with only a slight change in the post-story line. By bringing that past association with her, we believe more about her interactions with her son-in-law and grandchildren than demonstrated in this script. I liked the gradualness of her developing rapport with Diaz.
The candy-colored, sterile production design around her Del Ray, FL retirement community is a marvelous contrast to the wintry messy Philly setting, though there are too many easy "Golden Girls"-type jokes.
Hanson commendably resists the usual chick flick tendency to string together pop tracks until over halfway through, and here the Jamaican songs thematically refer to a key scene and are even mostly by the original performers (though I was surprised that he didn't use a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "Sitting Here In Limbo" that would have changed the gender.)
The other pop culture in jokes are amusing - the gathering around the TV to watch the also Jimmy Choo shoe-obsessed "Sex and the City" (which Feuerstein guested on); Diaz's character not being able to read a line about Eminem, of Hanson's "8 Mile"; and Colette's character setting a "Rocky"-like goal of running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum. The poetry reading is incorporated a bit heavy-handed but at least it's believable that Norman Lloyd is a retired English professor who could patiently introduce the joy of reading poetry to someone who has never read it before.
What is jarring was the choice to keep the Jewish context of the novel even with the casting of Ken Howard, MacLaine, Colette and Diaz, who are individually not given any Jewish shtick or personal connection. All the secondary characters are still made explicitly, and unnecessarily, Jewish -- we see "Scott"s bar mitzvah photo, his dad makes a "mazel tov" toast and a key scene is a Jewish ritual; the residents of the retirement community have specifically Jewish names and inflections, particularly the best friend "Mrs. Lefkowitz"; and the evil Step Mother is a caricature of a Jewish Mother bragging about her "My Marsha" daughter who gets a spiteful comeuppance that's odd given that the only way I could absorb the main characters was by assuming that they were gentiles who had married into a Jewish family or children of an inter-faith marriage. The only justification I could think of was to have a warm ethnic family surroundings a la "Big Fat Greek Wedding," but the importance of family and friends could be demonstrated with surroundings that matched the lead actors more credibly.