Friends with Money -- A Smart Spring Flick

Friends with Money is a surprisingly observant dramedy about the trials and tribulations of one single woman and her three married friends in the Los Angeles area. The indie film stars Jennifer Aniston as a down-on-her-luck thirtysomething who cleans houses for a living. Her three friends are financially successful and married but not all of them happily so as we find out. Her slightly older friends are played by Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, and Catherine Keener. Directed by Nicole Holofcener, the film leisurely yet competently explores gender and class issues, the idiosyncracies of relationships between single and married adults, and the pain and pleasures of marriage.

The performances by all four actresses are right on target, with Aniston leading the way and treading close to the territory of her revelatory performance in The Good Girl. She is the centerpiece of the film. Her character Olivia is so poor that she drives from one department store to another collecting sample-sized moisturizers because she can’t afford to pay for the regular size. Everything about Aniston here is reticent. The lines in her face are a bit more noticeable, for she’s minus the perk and the smile that made her famous. Her eyes reflect the sadness of a woman who must stare across at her wealthier Boomer friends wondering if she will ever live the American Dream that has been so fully realized by her friends.

Her three friends are not without their share of problems, though. Frances McDormand’s Jane is married to a man who is effeminate and whom nearly everyone suspects is gay. She and her sock designer husband are a bit of an odd couple, and the film generates genuine bits of humor regarding their relationship and conversations others have about his sexual orientation. Catherine Keener’s Christine is a screenwriter whose husband happens to be her writing partner. Despite their constant disagreements from everything from the lines of their characters to how they should treat one another, she and her husband agree to add another floor to their house. Joan Cusack’s Franny and her husband are the happiest and most settled of the three couples. Franny’s much more mature than Olivia and wonders aloud how she and her seemingly aimless housekeeper friend could possibly be friends. Franny tries the hardest to set Aniston up on a date, and her matchmaking leads to some unusual encounters with an opportunistic physical trainer.

At 88 minutes, Friends with Money is always interesting, with each scene revealing a little more about the changes confronting these characters. The performances and the film’s direction are nicely complimentary, providing a breezy expose of thirty-to-fortysomething life from one end of the economic scale to another. The situations involving the characters in the film aren’t always resolved in the way one might predict from the outset. The film’s relatively brief running time is somewhat of a detriment, though. It could have, for instance, given us more information about the man for whom Jennifer Aniston still has feelings or explored in more detail the challenges facing Franny and her husband. He answers almost all of her questions with one-sentence answers, a symptom of a potentially problematic relationship that might have been the subject of a 90-minute story all on its own. Their characters seem a bit underwritten in comparison to others in the film.

In the final frame of Friends with Money, Jennifer Aniston’s once-lonely and desperate house maid nods in agreement after a new person in her life looks into her blue eyes and says with some hesitation, “You know. I have problems with…people.” More than anything else, this occasionally humorous study of women and men on the brink of midlife crises, reminds us of the plain truth about life---that it is filled with problems whether we are with or without money.

Grade: B

NEWS AND NOTES

J.J. Abrams, the wiz behind Lost and the director of the upcoming Mission Impossible 3, has been hired to resurrect the Star Trek series.

Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd are starring in Three Days of Rain, the new Broadway play that opened to above average reviews the weekend of April 21.

Hilary Swank, two-time Oscar winner for Million Dollar Baby and Boys Don’t Cry, will star in The Reaping, a horror story about a former Christian missionary. The film will debut in August.

Robin Williams and Toni Collette will star in The Night Listener, which is based on the Armistead Maupin story about a radio talk show who develops a friendship with an AIDS patient.

The legendary Robert Altman will direct an all-star cast that includes Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, and Kevin Kline in A Prairie Home Companion. The film about the sale of a Minnesota radio station was written by Garrison Keillor.

Bret Ratner has been tapped to direct X-Men 3. He is replacing Bryan Singer, who directed the first two films in the series. Singer and his writers from the first two X-Men films are directing and writing Superman Returns, which will open June 30.