BEFORE: This one's a bit of a leftover from the February romance chain, I couldn't work it in there this year - it could have gone next to "Rumor Has It..." but then I didn't have another film with Shirley MacLaine that would have fit there, and anyway, I followed a different path out of "Rumor Has It..." that got me to another romance film, and this didn't connect with anything else in that month.
Shirley MacLaine carries over from "The Children's Hour", and gets me from 1961 to 2005, back into the current millennium.
THE PLOT: Straight-laced Rose breaks off relations with her party girl sister, Maggie, over an indiscretion involving Rose's boyfriend. The chilly atmosphere is broken with the arrival of Ella, the grandmother neither sister knew existed.
AFTER: I probably say this all the time, but this is a strange film - not strange in the way of some films, like when there's a giant unexplained spider in the cityscape or there's a weird man in a bunny costume who pops up in someone's bedroom at night, but strange because it's hard to pin down what genre this is supposed to fit in. It's not funny enough to be a comedy, really, and there's not enough romance in it for it to be a romance film, there's plenty of drama but it doesn't really feel like it fully belongs in that section either. Which could explain why it took me a long while to program it - like, it could have fit in February, but after watching it, I might have felt like that was a bit of a stretch. I had it next to another film with Toni Collette, "Krampus", but that's a Christmas/horror film, and how do you transition from a film like this to a film like that? So it's hardly unlinkable, but it just never felt like the right time to program it - but I've got to get it off the list, so screw it, it's going here. It gets me to two more films with Cameron Diaz, and then the chain progresses from there.
But isn't real life a little like that, with ups and downs, comic elements and dramatic changes to personal situations, and some romance, too, if you're lucky? OK, but we don't always expect movies to juggle all of those elements, like you might get two out of three with a romantic comedy, or a romantic drama, but when a film is right down the middle like this, it feels like neither fish nor foul, like it doesn't know what it wants to be in the end. We sort of need a new category, called something like, "Whatever this film means to you, that's what it is." And if you enjoyed this, you might also like "Cowboys & Aliens", because it's a Western/action/sci-fi film.
Let's stick with "family drama" because the story at the core of this film is about two sisters, Maggie is an attractive, free-spirited partier and Rose is a little older, a little frumpier and less outgoing, but on the other hand, she's got a solid law career and has her life in order. But Maggie's lack of responsibility has repercussions, although she's not really one for understanding what repercussions are, it seems. She sleeps with Rose's boyfriend, which seems terrible, but viewed from another angle, perhaps she did Rose a favor - I mean, it takes two to tango, and the boyfriend also slept with Maggie, so isn't it better to find out that he's that kind of guy before things get too serious? Anyway, it was an office romance so it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway.
Maggie's not a very likable character, she can't hold down a job, she steals money from her family at every opportunity, and never apologizes for any of her mistakes or slip-ups. There may be valid reasons for why she is the way she is, but they aren't discovered until much later in the picture, after a number of family secrets have been exposed and discussed. It's too complicated to even break down here, but it sort of has to be to justify why these sisters haven't seen their grandmother since they were little girls. And Maggie's kleptomania is unfortunate, but it's a plot justification that explains how she learns the existence of their grandmother, as she stumbles on correspondence from her when looking for money in her father's desk.
The goal is clear here, separate the two inseparable sisters to create some character development. Even though the way she found the grandmother was very contrived, Maggie benefits from a little discipline and self-realization that only Grandma can dish out. And being in a retirement community gives her the chance to bond with a blind hospital patient that just happens to be a retired English teacher, and she just happens to have dyslexia or something like it. Again, very very contrived, and I find it really hard to believe that her being unable to hold down a job goes all the way back to a reading problem, and that this problem could go undiagnosed until she was in her what, mid-30's? Dyslexia is a poor excuse for being an irresponsible screw-up for one's entire adult life.
Meanwhile, Rose learns to enjoy life a little more, without having to constantly think about and cover for her screw-up sister. She takes a leave of absence, gets a part-time gig walking dogs, which seems like an odd choice for someone with a law degree, but hey, whatever, follow your bliss - and starts dating someone she knew from the law firm but didn't connect with on a business trip, because he came off as a bit forward and annoying. But then they date and he orders for her at a sushi place, which first comes off as arrogant, because he's supposedly some kind of "expert food orderer", which I don't think is even a thing, but then she learns to appreciate the fact that he orders for her. But no, come on, girl, you were right the first time. In this day and age, what man still does this, especially for a woman he barely knows? Hell, I've known my wife for 23 years, and I don't think I would order for her in a restaurant, she's perfectly capable of ordering her own meal. It's not polite, it's just a bad leftover from a less enlightened time. I might make a suggestion, like "Hey, why not see if you can order THIS steak with THAT topping that you like?" but to place her order with the waiter? Uh-uh. Like, only if she had to use the restroom or something.
Ugh, and the title is just horrible, because it's probably supposed to represent the sisters figuratively putting themselves in each other's shoes to see the other person's point of view, but then they HAD to have Maggie constantly borrowing/stealing Rose's shoes at the beginning, and then at the end one character gets married and wears her grandmother's shoes during the ceremony. Gee, thanks for driving the point home and over-explaining the title, I never would have got it otherwise. Does some screenwriter think we're that stupid?
Also starring Cameron Diaz (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Toni Collette (last seen in "Shaft"), Ken Howard (last seen in "Joy"), Brooke Smith (last seen in "Fair Game"), Candice Azzara (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Richard Burgi (last seen in "Fun with Dick and Jane"), Anson Mount (last seen in "Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden"), Mark Feuerstein (last seen in "Defiance"), Eric Balfour (last seen in "What Women Want"), Francine Beers (last seen in "Lucky You"), Jerry Adler (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Alan Blumenfeld (last seen in "The Flintstones"), Andy Powers, Ivana Milicevic (last seen in "Aloha"), Norman Lloyd (last seen in "Trainwreck"), Carlease Burke (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Benton Jennings, Jackie Geary, Jennifer Weiner, with cameos from Mary-Pat Green (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Nicole Randall Johnson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 Jamaican jerk dishes
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