In Her Shoes

Idea: Rose (Toni Collette) and Maggie (Cameron Diaz) are sisters and the best of friends, which naturally means that they are also opposites. When beautiful Maggie's carefree ways finally push conservative and less-beautiful-by-Hollywood-standards Rose to throw her sister out of her life, Maggie tracks down the grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) she never knew she had and attempts to begin her life again in Florida while Rose reevaluates her life in Philadelphia.

It was especially important to me to point out the setting since I had absolutely no idea, and no one mentioned it for a solid hour, I swear. That bugged me.

I would also feel remiss if I didn't point out how sexy Mark Feuerstein can be. I always liked him just for being him, with eye-catching performances on The West Wing and in What Woman Want. I don't what it is about him - somehow he can be smarmy, nerdy, and delightfully caustic all in one turn. These qualities he plays to varying degrees depending on the role. But here, thanks to Jennifer Weiner's novel, Susannah Grant's screenplay, and Curtis Hanson's direction, he gets to be sexy. Congrats, Mark, you've made it.

Speaking of Hanson's direction, his deft hand in both comedy and drama serve the audience well. With another director at the helm, this piece would have surely descended into the realm of fluff, but he manages to showcase the movie's central bond with confidence and compassion.

Collette, from whom I always expect good work, and Diaz, from whom I occasionally expect good work, both turn in winning performances, and I like that their differences never seem to descend into odd couple cliché.

I'd say that MacLaine was also in top form, and she was, but it was thrown off by a sudden realization that her character is reverse Aurora. I'd like to pretend that I am not one for type casting, and I know MacLaine is a talented actress capable of many different things. Even so, there's this revelation in the movie that was just so false to me that it threw me out of the movie. I got back in pretty quickly, but I started imagining what Aurora would have done under similar circumstances and was disappointed by comparison.

I could have done without the numerous loving shots of Diaz's legs, but the movie's amiable. I enjoyed the time I spent with it. Hanson's ability to draw hidden depths out of the most unlikely sources certainly elevated the material, but it still feels like nothing special in the long run. B+

Bonus: I got to see a certain trailer on the big screen, which made me all the more giddy.