Bloodless Coup

Friends With Money

I didn't love Lovely and Amazing. In fact I found Catherine Keener's lead unusually easy to dislike. So much so that if she'd walked in front of a speeding bus halfway through the film I would have been thrilled. But that film dealt with some interesting relationships and featured some nice characters and good performances when it came to the women who surrounded Keener's character. So I was curious to see what writer/director Nicole Holofcener's follow-up, Friends With Money, would be like. I deeply regret that decision.

The movie has nothing to say, really. It doesn't take you anywhere or show you anything of the slightest interest. It's dull, unenlightening and in parts just weird (and not in a good way). I mean what's the point of the Simon McBurney metrosexual character? But much, much worse than these (considerable) sins and weaknesses are (again) the characters Holofcener writes. Joan Cusack's is fine, but I hated the other three at positiving seething levels. I mean I DESPISED them. Well, at the end not Aniston's becomes she's such a passive, tiresome, bored entity that it's hard to maintain seething hatred towards her. But the Keener and McDormand characters - walking in front of a speeding bus would have been far too good for them. I don't normally advocate torture, but ...

What I find really peculiar about Holofcener writing characters like this is that they are so awful in ways that personify some of the worst supposedly-feminine stereotypes - cranky, bossy and nasty for no good reason (though of course acting this way is done in the name of supposedly good aims), hopelessly (and stupidly) misreading men, happliy letting men walk all over them, drastic mood changes and turning against their own previous decisions, irrational, too relationship-centered ... I could go on. At length. But I find it curious that a woman would write these women - who "irritating" doesn't begin (not even close) to describe - and make them so obnoxious by employing the worst traits men often attribute to women. Maybe that's not so strange, but I find it peculiar.

Anyway, avoid this film - avoid it like the plague - unless you are a sadist.