In Her Shoes

In Her Shoes (Director: Curtis Hanson)

Hanson directed Tom Cruise in one of his many 1983 sex comedies, Losin' It. His sort of trashy B-movie streak continued with 1990's Bad Influence, then came the big hit The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. So after all that, and the long-delayed The River Wild, naturally he directed 1997's L.A. Confidential, one of the best movies of the nineties and probably should have won Best Picture that year over the behemoth Titanic. Since then, Hanson has done small-town movies, the excellent Wonder Boys and huge hit 8 Mile. In Her Shoes is based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner and is adapted by Erin Brockovich writer Susannah Grant.

Hanson has found a comfort zone in telling stories with a homey backdrop. After his explosive thrillers in the nineties, he must have needed a calming influence in directing movies with people doing everyday things, you know, living life. Good people do bad things, they don't know what to do with their life, they figure it out in the end; that seems to be the ongoing theme in his work.

In this film, Maggie Feller (Cameron Diaz) is a screwup booze-n-sex type of girl with no real prospects but has been given numerous chances from her family to find a proper path. Her sister Rose (Toni Collette) is a workaholic lawyer who is introduced in much the same manner Maggie is--having relations...but Maggie's ends in a bathroom stall throwing up while Rose's seems to be a storybook chapter. After her drunkeness gets her shunned by her stepmom's house, Maggie goes to live temporarily with her sister, where her usual leeching ways become a nuisance and she is kicked out. Angry about it, Maggie crosses the line by seducing Rose's love interest, causing the two sisters to have a life-changing fight and live life apart, unknowing what the other is doing. Maggie discovers some letters from a grandmother, Ella Hirsch (Shirley MacLaine) and goes down to a retirement home in Palmetto, Florida to basically start over with someone who doesn't know what a mooch she is, and Rose strikes up another romance with Simon Stein (Mark Feuerstein) and both sisters try to find that damn happiness.

You root for characters like these to pull it together, and Hanson does a good job at slowly peeling the layers of withheld truth from Maggie and Rose, their small victories not making them perfect (some bad always seems to follow what seems to be a permanent good). It takes a little too much time, especially in the early parts of the movie, for the story to progress, but the viewer is rewarded with some good moments. It's got a good message, in that the hopeless can break out of it with the right people who won't accept the mediocrity that entails, and how lucky a hopeless person can be that a special someone can find the tiniest sliver of good even in a screwed-up person. And, the good news is that the answer for Maggie isn't a good deep-dickin' from some nice guy, and neither is it for Rose. Lots of chick flicks and romantic comedies seem to think that perfect person is waiting out there, and that they must not have any flaws, and that they are the key to a beautiful life, which always rings false.

Diaz and especially Collette are very good. The most memorable performance for me comes from Norman Lloyd (he was the awful Mr. Nolan in Dead Poets Society), who plays the bedridden blind former professor who helps Maggie discover talents she didn't know she had. All in all, it's a winner.