In Her Shoes stars Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette in a wonderful contemporary drama about two very different sisters who struggle with adulthood. Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) directs. While this film might be billed as a comedy, it only has a few moments of mild comic relief. Even so, I thought it was the kind of great movie you can immerse yourself into for two hours.

Toni Collette, who was great as the mother in The Sixth Sense, plays a lawyer who doesn’t have much of a love life. She has a brief affair with her boss, but her hopes of a relationship are quickly shattered when she comes home to find the boss in bed with her younger sister. Cameron Diaz plays the sister. She’s a gorgeous blonde who can’t hold a job and lives entirely off her looks. The problem is she’s getting older and is to the point where she needs more substance in her life, but creates such a burden on anyone she’s around that people aren’t willing to help her.

The story explains that Cameron and Toni’s mother had mental problems and she died while they were very young. Toni’s character, being the older one, took the death differently and matured a lot faster. That explains why she’s the professional. Cameron’s character was just a little girl and never outgrew being that hurt little motherless girl. She was blessed with beauty, and bounces between jobs and men like an immature person would. Their father remarried a materialistic control freak who doesn’t want anything to do with either daughter, so that isolates them even further. The incident with Toni’s boss was what finally drove a wedge between them.

Not having anywhere else to go, Cameron goes down to Miami in search of her estranged grandmother, played by Shirley MacLaine, whose mental daughter was Cameron’s mother. After the mother died in the car accident, MacLaine was sort of pushed away by the family, but the girls were too young to remember. MacLaine lives in a retirement community, and Cameron quickly makes a place for herself among the elderly. From there on, things start changing for everyone.

What I loved so much about this movie was how well fleshed out the characters were. They all seem very real and the character development was excellent. Cameron and Toni really brought their characters to life and were perfectly cast in their roles. MacLaine, who is easily one of the greatest actresses ever, delivers a great performance as the distant grandmother who never stopped loving her family. Don’t worry, though, this is not a tearjerker. This movie might be dismissed by some guys as a ‘chick flick’, but it is hard to label it that when Diaz spends much of the movie in her underwear or a bikini.

Curtis Hanson did an amazing job directing this film, and one of the DVD extras helps explain his use of imagery to tell the story. For Cameron’s scene, he often used handheld cameras to get that unsteady look that reflects her character’s problems. He also used a lot of mirrors to show how the characters were constantly looking at themselves and evaluating. There was also a lot of subtle artwork featuring little girls to drive in the meaning of sisterhood and family. Hanson is a very versatile director who can do great dramatic material like this as well as action thrillers like L.A. Confidential and The River Wild. His last film was the Eminem-starring 8 Mile, which turned out to be a great movie.

Be sure to watch the DVD extra featuring interviews with the real-life members of the retirement community where this was filmed. They offer some hilarious insight into the making of the movie and the hard work put in by extras in the movie making process.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD