Friends with Money

Friends with Money
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener
Sony Classics

A co-worker came in while I was watching this movie and asked, "Is this good?" and my knee-jerk answer was, "Yes, it's very good."

Why did I say that? Because it's actually not very good at all. It's pretty average. I think I got caught up in the pre-buzz generated by Sundance for this movie and, not knowing where the movie was going at the time, blurted out what I thought I should say.

Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) is a former teacher who is now a maid, and she has bad taste in men and life choices. Her friends are all well-to-do. The writer couple Christine (Catherine Keener) and David (Jason Isaacs) write for a big TV show but their marriage is on the rocks, the fashion designer Jane (Frances McDormand) and her metro-confused-as-homo husband Aaron (Simon McBurney), who owns his own business, are wealthy, and then there's the extremely well-off Franny (Joan Cusack) and her husband Matt (Greg Germann) who like to donate to charities.

It's one of those vignette movies, one that doesn't have a real plot, is dialogue and character driven--and those things can be good except for the fact that I didn't really give a damn about any of the characters. The most interesting one, Olivia, is even difficult to care for. Loosely, the plot is about her and how she can't seem to get on track, but they all have their own problems. And that's basically what the movie is about--money doesn't buy happiness. And there are a couple of scenes that are OK, but nothing really substantial. I found myself wanting to get involved but couldn't.

I haven't seen any of the other Holofcener offerings all the way through--I saw a little bit of Walking and Talking and got bored, and I haven't seen any of Lovely & Amazing. So perhaps Holofcener, like some critically-acclaimed directors can be sometimes, isn't for me.