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'Friends with Money’ focuses on happiness, emotion
BY ROGER MOORE / The Orlando Sentinel
Thursday, Apr 20, 2006 - 11:35:04 pm CDT
Money, we’re all told by the people who have it, “can’t buy happiness.” But it certainly can keep annoying little things like awful jobs, low self-esteem and the like at bay.
Nicole Holofcener (“Lovely & Amazing”) adds to her collection of movies about lost, lovelorn women with “Friends with Money,” a shrewdly observed slice of L.A. disconnect. It’s not the friends with the money who have the problem. It’s the “friend” without it (Jennifer Aniston). She’s making them all feel guilty.
A group of Angelino pals meet and chat and gossip about one another. Frances McDormand is Jane. She’s the “angry” one, a clothing designer coping with the ravages of age by letting herself go and bullying her suspiciously effeminate husband. Joan Cusack is a rich liberal who lets her husband blow her money on their spoiled kids.
Catherine Keener is half of a screenwriting team (Jason Isaacs is her mister) filling the void in their lives with an extravagant addition to their house, irking every neighbor in sight.
And Aniston is an ex-teacher drifting through a maid’s job in a haze of pot smoke, a woman whose self-esteem has bottomed out. Now she accepts sex and little else from a jerk personal trainer (Scott Caan) who uses her and treats her like dirt.
Her friends, the nicer ones, think that the maid thing is “so unhip, it’s cool.” But they’re judging. Not that they should be.
Jane’s husband, Aaron (Simon McBurney), decorates and dresses a little too carefully.
“Just because you care about what you wear, it doesn’t mean you’re gay.”
And he’s the well-adjusted one in that couple.
Keener and Isaacs set off simmering sparks as people who are using an addition to their house to not think about their own “issues,” with the threat that this distraction will be the very thing that breaks them up.
It’s funny, sad and redemptive. And “Friends with Money” is about compromises we make on our way to happiness. Sometimes, the only thing that can ensure our happiness is seeing how well off we are, emotionally or financially, when compared to our friends.
Friends With Money
3½ stars
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Stars: Frances McDormand, Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, Jason Isaacs
Rated: R (for language, some sexual content, brief drug reference).
Running Time: 1 hour, 28 minutes
Now Showing: Grand
The Reel Story: Four women friends in Los Angeles meet and gossip in this well-done film about the way money changes lives and relationships.
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