bbewnylorac This film does have things going for it. The production values are high, the cast is impeccable - Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener to name a few. And I guess the format of a group of mature age friends living suburban lives is valid. Many French films are based on such ensembles. But I found that there is way, way, too much dialogue in Friends With Money. Characters have to express every little feeling they have, and just about every character has a scene with every other character in which to discuss every detail of their lives, and of their friends' lives. And also the plot is weak -- a group of friends who are rich have a single friend who is working as a maid. Well, how exciting. The movie Spanglish with Adam Sandler covered some of the same territory. In that case a Hispanic maid comes with her daughter to live with a rich LA family. But Spanglish had more passion, more interesting twists and turns. Spanglish was about the maid's genuine wish for her daughter not to be swallowed up by this family who were so generous to her. Friends With Money means well, but I didn't warm to it.

tieman64 "What's the worst possible thing you can call a woman? You're probably thinking of words like s**t, w***e, b***h, c**t, s**k. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? F**, girl, b***h, p***y. I've even heard the term 'm*****a'. Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that's not royally f****d up." - Jessica Valenti"Women are nothing but machines for producing children." - Napoleon There aren't many female directors who manage to command a global film release. Kathryn Bigelow does, but then she essentially makes big action movies. Meanwhile, "smaller" female directors like Jane Campion, Claire Denis and Kelly Reichardt go unknown. Recent polls even suggest a sharp decline in the number of working female film directors over the past 20 years, at least in Hollywood. In Europe, the opposite seems to be true, though again few flock to see their films. Catherine Breillat's stopped scaring audiences and started scaring financiers.So Nicole Holofcener is a bit of an anomaly. She's not necessary a good director, but she's a woman, and her films, which are almost all romantic dramedies and/or light satires, do enough to differentiate her from other genre film-makers. Perhaps Holofcener's best film, though perhaps also her most unintentionally sinister, "Lovely and Amazing" tracks the lives of several women (a mother, 2 daughters and an adopted daughter), all of whom suffer from various inferiority complexes. Most of these self-esteem issues stem from anxieties regarding self image, masculine expectations, and racial or class based insecurities. So one character feels shameful for being black, another for being overweight, another for ageing, another for not being "sexy", another for not having a job etc. Some characters, as is typical of Holofcener's films, are even guilty/insecure because they're "better" than others, either financially or physically. The film does well to present "real" women, complete with desires, insecurities, hangups and neuroses. Holofcener's cast eschew flattering lighting and make up, her script is consistently funny and/or riveting, and the film contains a number of powerful moments, like one incident in which a woman's body is frankly judged by her lover, and another in which we learn that a depressed kid has been secretly drowning her sorrows at a local fast food joint. Unfortunately things take a dubious turn in "Lovely and Amazing's" final act. The film initially portrays its men in a quite cynical light – they're all judgemental, distant and aloof - and recognises that its female characters are anxious precisely because they define themselves via the gaze of the Male Other, or, in some cases, even other women. But when our female characters then assert their independence, break free from a certain patriarchal thumb or even claim the Male Gaze for themselves, they're swiftly and severely punished (physical disfigurements, rape charges, desexualization etc) by Holofcener. To demand power and the transaction of the gaze is to risk destruction. The film then suggests that the only way to successfully remove oneself from the gaze, from being forced to define oneself in the eyes of another's desires, is to remove oneself totally from all sexuality. In this regard the film ends with our women secluded, asexual, disfigured and back in their ancestral home; 3 lost, desexualised daughters under the eye of a matriarch. Whether Holofcener's being unintentionally reactionary or intentionally critical, is unknown.More conventional is Holofcener's "Friends With Money", which plays like a sprawling, inferior version of her later film, "Please Give". Here the plot centres on several loosely connected friends, all with their own foibles. One subplot involves a woman going through an angry midlife crisis, another involves a husband who may or may not be gay, another involves several women who are either jealous of their own wealth or ashamed of their poverty, whilst another involves a woman struggling with her increasingly distant husband. As with most of Holofcener's film, two themes are given prominence. The first is the question of how one is able to be an agent of compassion in a social system in which individual self interest is given primacy, the second is a subplot in which a woman's artistic passions are repeatedly crushed by financial necessities. The radiant Catherine Keener stars in both films. Emiley Mortimer gives a brave performance in "Lovely and Amazing". Despite being "about women", both films are resoundingly male-centric, womanhood defined entirely by one's relationship to men.8/10 - Worth one viewing.

Greg Debniak I rarely watch movies a 2nd time within a 3-yr period but I just watched this again recently and was, again, impressed. I enjoyed the character development and found myself rooting for Jennifer Anniston's character throughout. It's already a bit dated but that didn't interfere with my enjoying it a 2nd time.My only disappointment was the ending which left me wanting more. I'm surprised this movie wasn't picked up and turned into a television series. It begs further story development as Jennifer's character seems to finally find some resolution and the other characters' lives begin to change in interesting ways but the viewer is left hanging.I would have rated it higher if I could have felt some closure for all of the characters but now I feel empty-handed and wondering about the lives of these people after the last scene. I suppose that is what a good story is supposed to do. There really isn't that much of a story here, it's just very well done character development and some excellent acting. The kicker is: where's the REST of the story?

JasparLamarCrabb A stinging portrait of four friends fueled by enough angst to bring down even the most self-assured feminist. Writer/director Nicole Holofcener shows various sides of what is essentially the same woman using Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener and Frances McDormand as her pawns. Aniston is the loser of the group, with delusions of becoming a personal trainer (stepping up from her house cleaning job) and Cusack is the group's wealthy dowager. In between, there's McDormand and Keener, each clinging to decidedly precarious marriages. The actresses are fine with Aniston maintaining the indie cred she captured via THE GOOD GIRL. Keener is terrific as one part of a screen writing couple who blows a hole in her marriage by pointing out her husband's bad breath (it's one of the film's most uncomfortable confrontation and this is a movie with MANY confrontations). McDormand is almost comic as the woman on the verge whose husband may or may not be what he seems...or may be exactly what he seems to everyone else. It's all too shallow to be truly compelling.