Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Sharkflei Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Edwin The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

jadavix Here is another female-helmed movie without point or rhyme or reason. The director gets a few characters together and puts them in situations where they do what they do without ever coming to any kind of realisation about anything, or any sort of climax or resolution. These movies are watchable but forgettable.This is the one with Jennifer Aniston, who seems much younger than her circle of friends played by - who else - Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack. They have husbands who are barely glimpsed except for one Roman Polanski doppelganger whom everyone thinks is gay. The movie suggests maybe he is... or isn't. It's never resolved, and you find yourself wondering what the point is.Aniston quits her job and becomes a maid for what must be a greatly reduced pay scale in order to justify the movie's title. However the central theme of her making less money than her friends is also totally undercooked and not explored in any meaningful way. If it wasn't called "Friends with money" you'd probably not even notice that that was intended to be the theme of the movie. What sticks out far more is Aniston's relative youth and beauty in contrast to her well off yet miserable, unhappily married friends, as women always are in movies like this. It hurts to say she was miscast however, because she is the movie's only source of life.

brian maosn Was it just me or did this movie seem very short? I felt like the plot could have done more but it still was enough to get me thinking. Jennifer Aniston's character was made to seem the most likable, to me anyway which I think is intended, despite her little devious habits on the side like theft and snooping around people's houses during her job. So it was interesting and creepily realistic to think that she, the most humble, unfortunate and yet most physically attractive of all the female characters ended up with the greasy haired socially awkward couch potato because they had the most in common when it came to their honest views and morals compared to everyone else. This movie also displays some raw opinions of aging that moved me and seriously got me thinking about what we should be doing when we are young and where we should be when we are old.

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.

Victor I didn't have high expectations after reading some reviews, but I found this pleasantly charming. It's fair to compare it to a Woody Allen picture, with a host of characters all worrying about themselves, or how they appear to others.The stories of each couple don't run the gamut of human experience and are well within the boundaries of middle-class concerns, but this is no bad thing. It makes friends more believable as they begin to question why they even like each other, which is a feature of long-term friendship that tends to crop up in comedy-dramas like this.The script is subtle and the acting above par throughout, by the whole cast (I thought Aniston was on top form as a likable slacker - she makes her mark against the other, more experienced, female leads).This is a story about the ebb and flow of life, rather than a film about extreme ups and downs. As such, it's much more of a filmed play than a cinematic experience, so I can understand if it didn't really work in a theatre, but it certainly works on DVD as it feels a lot more intimate.Definitely worth a watch.