IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

LilyDaleLady I caught this on late night TV, having missed it in the theaters originally. I wasn't expecting brilliance, but just HOW bad this was - given all the talent involved (Keaton, Ryan, Kudrow, Ephron sisters) it was pretty shockingly poor.One thing that stood out to me (in 2014) is that filmmakers need to be more careful about centering pictures on things like phones or computers. The technology changes SO fast, and it dates the film just horribly. Think about movies from the 40s-60s; they often seem ageless. But nobody today can see those big clunky cellphones from 1999 without falling over laughing...my god! the giant antennas! lol!What we DO forget though -- and this is endemic throughout the entire film -- is how costly a cellphone was in 1999. It was something only a person of wealth and privilege would own, or if you did own it, could use it round the clock, with no concern over every expensive minute (unlimited chat was unknown then). Simply that the Mozell clan can afford to yak constantly on expensive phones was a clear, elitist signal that these folks are staggering rich -- BEFORE you notice that they all live in giant Hollywood mansions, drive huge SUVs and can travel about on a whim.Screenwriters Delia and Nora Ephron based this on their own lives, as wealthy Hollywoodistas, but it just displays their cluelessness about how ordinary Americans live or deal with the universal problem of aging parents, illness and death. It trivializes a whole serious and very human subject. In his last film, Walter Matthau is touching if for no other reason than he was actually very ill and just hanging on; he died a few months later.Diane Keaton directs this mess very awkwardly, though she was given a script that I think had to have been close to unfilmable. For starters, it is heavily autobiographical -- the Ephrons are a sister clan of successful writers, whose parents WERE successful Hollywood screenwriters. That means everyone involved was way too close to the subject or milieu to be objective.Meg Ryan is attractive here, pre-facelift, though she is playing the same role as in many other films (goofy overwhelmed chick). Keaton should have known better than to cast herself; she is 16-18 years older than the other actresses and far too old to be their sister (we see them all playing together as as similar-age siblings in flashbacks!).The main star here is....the lavish sets, the art direction of which totally distracts from the plot. Ryan's character lives in a Tuscan mansion of vast proportions and decor, despite no visible means of income. Matthau is shown in an unbelievably posh Modernist mansion you enter on a bridge over a pool (and it's been seen in FAR too many other movies and commercials to work here as a believable family home).The final straw: at the excruciating end (the film is 95 minutes but feels like 3 hours), the sisters come together after Dad's sudden death for Thanksgiving dinner. They get in a cutesy, phony food fight throwing flour on each other's posh black Donna Karan outfits (*plugged by NAME!)....now, who without a maid or cleaning service, would throw FLOUR all over themselves and the kitchen floor, just before Thanksgiving dinner? Nobody. Only someone rich, and with servants, would remotely consider it.Conclusion: just painful to watch, unfunny and snobbishly elitist. Avoid.

moviemeister-272-935168 My English professors always taught me to get to the point when making a point. So here's the point: this movie sucks very large donkey huevos. Never have I seen such a contrived plot with such contrived and whiny women. "Squak! Squak! Squak!" "Wah! Wah! Wah!" It's no wonder the father in the film goes into a coma and dies. He got off easy. And what's with Diane Keaton. Talk about abuse of director privileges and miscasting herself as the sibling of women who are almost 20 years her junior. There was not enough Oil of Olay and panty hose on the lens of the camera to soft focus her way out of that age difference. Bad directing, lousy script, and over-acting. A boring movie, period. From this man's perspective, there are good chick flicks out there, but this is not one of them. Movies like "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "The Princess Bride" are chick flicks that a guy can watch and enjoy, huevos intact. I want my time and my huevos back. This movie took both of them.

inspectors71 Telemarketer irritation--that's the feeling I had when I watched Hanging Up, an almost cartoonishly clichéd "woman's movie." Diane Keaton's direction of this mess is so incompetent that I hope she never stands behind a camera again. The movie fails on every level--it bored my wife and daughter (and it's only because I'm anal about finishing movies that I sat through 95 minutes of Hell; they went to bed).This was Walter Matthau's last movie, and it hurts to see such a premiere talent being wasted (although his toupee looks as if it could live on). Meg Ryan appears to have lost weight for Hanging Up (if that's possible) and seems to be carrying the mass of the world on her shoulders, physically dissipating in front of our eyes while wearing one paper-thin muscle shirt after another. Looking scrawny and bra-less isn't appealing to anyone.Okay, enough for the nastiness. This really is a waste of film stock. Whatever BIG messages it has about sibling rivalry and familial relationships and keeping your accident from your insurance company are lost in Keaton's attempt to play cute and/or sweet (the dog and the pill; the Iranian mom).The movie's called Hanging Up. My suggestion is to take the phone off the hook before the opening credits.

Rick Blaine That they made a television documentary on this is truly incredible. The suspicion has to be that Diane Keaton's ego is simply too big.It seems every time Delia helps Nora, things fall apart. Look at what Nora's done on her own and then look at what she got help with from 'sis'. It will be hard for you to find a single movie Delia was on that was not an abject failure.And if you thought First Wives Club was the most painful cinematic experience of your life, then you're ready for the ultimate pain: this one, miswritten by Delia Ephron from a book with the same name and misdirected by Diane Keaton.Matthau and Ryan are best - no one cannot love Walter and no one's ever resisted Meg, and both are very good actors and they work very well together - as in IQ where they were both eminently memorable.But nothing can save this garbage. Why studios allocate so much money to a project run by Diane Keaton? No one wants to hurt her feelings, but she doesn't worry much about hurting ours. Hers is a myopia where she just can't see how horrible she is at this game of movie making.And the Annie Hall hat? Did she really have to?Below bottom run on all counts.