Rose adores shoes. While food makes her "fatter" and clothes "don't look good," shoes always fit. As a single lawyer who plans trips she never takes and finds love in romance novels, she's elated when her boss, Jim, is sleeping beside her --- so much that she takes a photo for proof.
So when she gets a call to fetch her sister, Maggie (Cameron Diaz), who is passed out post-coital at her 10-year high school reunion, she's not too pleased. Taking her in after Maggie is kicked out of her house, Rose (Toni Collette) tolerates the empty Haagen-Daaz, the satin bras strewn on the couch, even the towed car. But finding Maggie knocking boots with Jim in her bed is another matter.
Incendiary insults fly.
Now banished from Rose's apartment, Maggie prowls around her father's house and discovers a cache of old letters from a mysterious maternal grandmother. Realizing her grandmother is still alive and prosperous, Maggie zips off to Miami. In this old folk's mecca, she plans to milk her grandmother for all she's worth.
Alive as ever, Ella (Shirley MacLaine) welcomes her granddaughter with open arms. Maggie proceeds to set up camp poolside, prompting a flustered resident to remark, "She's stuck a postage stamp to her bottom and called it a swimsuit."
Meanwhile, in the wake of her defunct affair, Rose decides to start a dog-walking business. En route she runs into Simon, the future love of her life.
With its zany sisters, family secrets, predictable romance and groovy soundtrack, In Her Shoes, adapted from Jennifer Weiner's novel, may sound like the recipe for the clichéd classic chick flick.
In reality, the director of L.A. Confidential delivers a sexy tale of two sisters. It's a sassy story in high heels about the search for a family's truth and the quest for forgiveness. The writer of Erin Brockovich provides a feisty script that electrifies the screen with zingers like Rose's line, "You can make money without seducing people," to which Maggie retorts, "Yea, or you'd starve to death."
The cutthroat dialogue extends into the geriatric world as well. As Ella tells Maggie, "If you don't have successful grandchildren, you're screwed."
The hilarious, however, shifts toward the serious at breakneck speed. "What's Simon like?" Maggie inquires of Rose.
"Why, do you want to screw him, too?"
Although it occasionally veers into sappiness, the film dazzles with wit and candor.
In Her Shoes takes an honest look at the insanity of love and the crazy things people do for their families. Ella, who vowed she would never build a relationship with her granddaughter based on watching television, sips martinis and watches Sex and the City. Seething with resentment, Rose hobbles around a cocktail party in Jimmy Choos that Maggie repaired with chewing gum.
Maggie, who failed an audition as a MTV VJ, recites an e.e. cummings poem at her sister's wedding.
While Shirley MacLaine superbly presides as stubborn matriarch, Cameron Diaz excels at prancing around as Maggie, a kleptomaniac mess who leaves emotional destruction in her wake. Toni Collette, however, sparkles as the screen's hidden gem. Departing from her usual role of demented mom (think The Sixth Sense or About A Boy), she's a proverbial ugly duckling who grapples with loving both Maggie and herself.
As both sisters learn, to really accept someone, you have to walk a day in her stilettos.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
