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Film review

On the other foot

Sure, In Her Shoes is a chick flick, but it's unexpectedly meaty, offering a satisfying repast to viewers of both genders.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published October 6, 2005

[Photo: Twentieth Century Fox]

Cameron Diaz plays Maggie, a party girl whose pretty exterior masks some unpleasant character flaws, in In Her Shoes.

LET’S CHAT Check out Times film critic Steve Persall’s blog.

In Her Shoes is an excellent example of a worthwhile film genre saddled with the unflattering title of "chick flick." I'm not a fan, as many of us with Y chromosomes aren't. But a movie this well written and acted, so committed to respecting its characters and, by extension, the audience, is impossible to dislike.

You may think you know what to expect from In Her Shoes from the previews and casting. You won't be entirely wrong, but you'll probably underestimate what director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Susannah Grant (working from Jennifer Weiner's novel) accomplish with the material. Nothing is as simple or sentimental as chick flicks typically are.

The story revolves around the Feller sisters, introduced through separate, revealing sexual encounters. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) attempts a bathroom stall quickie at her high school reunion, too drunk for anything except vomiting. Rose (Toni Collette) reads more romance into her tryst than the man - who happens to be her boss - will ever return. They are the party girl who gets everything simply by being beautiful and available and her plainer, level-headed sister who never gets what she deserves.

At first glance, Maggie seems like just another excuse for Diaz to shake her derriere, and Rose means more Muriel's Wedding dowdiness from Collette. Hanson and Grant have much more in store. Maggie's perfection is only skin deep; beneath are a liar and thief with a learning disability that explains a lot of her behavior. And Rose isn't merely a wallflower; her responses to her boss and Maggie when they disappoint are thornier than that.

The conflict between these women rings true at each turn, while their devotion, even during estrangement, is undeniable. Maggie commits an ultimate betrayal of her sister and bolts for Florida, where a grandmother named Ella Hirsch, whom she believed was dead, lives in a retirement community. What Maggie will do there is uncertain, but here's someone else she can con for living expenses.

Don't bet on it. This chick flick gets better with the appearance of Ella, played by Hollywood's grandest hen Shirley MacLaine, who has become to maternal movie roles what John Wayne was to Westerns. Twenty-two years after Terms of Endearment, she still defines the hopes and fears of raising children (or in Maggie's case, a woman-child) with steely resolve and a twinge of regret.

This brings us to an amazing facet of In Her Shoes: This is a movie that pays a lot of attention to old people living believable lives that are laced with witty wisdom and cooperative coping. The residents of Ella's retirement village aren't the butt of jokes about feebleness and geriatric sexuality, as in so many inferior movies. These characters are treated with the respect they deserve. MacLaine leads the way, but several sharp characters emerge, especially 90-year-old Norman Lloyd as a blind professor who brings out Maggie's better side.

The same courtesy extends to men in Hanson's movie. Films made from women's perspectives often cast men as philanderers in need of punishment. Doing so may be cathartic, but it is as unfair as any other stereotype. In Her Shoes has two key male characters do hurtful things, but they also go away with self-inflicted emotional wounds, and come back to help. And the nice guy every chick flick needs for someone's comfort isn't a pushover; the sister he's courting needs to clean up her act a bit before he'll commit.

Hanson can't completely redefine the Beaches mentality of chick flicks in one movie. He still resorts to cuteness in the third act when forced to find an upbeat resolution amid all this honesty. But there hasn't been anything like In Her Shoes in recent memory, a movie made for women that can also make men drop the Y chromosome stuff and say: Why not? Finding one is like catching wind beneath your wings.

Grade: A-

Director: Curtis Hanson

Cast: Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, Shirley MacLaine, Mark Feuerstein, Ken Howard, Candice Azzara, Richard Burgi, Brooke Smith

Screenplay: Susannah Grant, based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner

Rating: PG-13; sexual situations, profanity, mature themes

Running time: 130 min.

[Last modified October 5, 2005, 10:24:08]