In Her Shoes

SPRING BREAK 2006 Fast Review
This movie is about family, and with a perfectly real family of my own, I may have been disinclined to watch it, after all...why watch someone else's drama when you have your own, right? Wrong. Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, and Shirley MacLaine each give unique heartfelt performances, and a by the numbers story is elevated to a movie that teaches us something about the way a family works and the reasons it does so. The sisters are completely opposite, but they can't not stick together, there are about a million cliche sayings like "opposite sides of the same coin" and so forth, but that would only cheapen the effect of the movie. There are sad parts, and happy parts, there are times when we are disgusted with the characters only to feel for them later when we see the bigger picture. The movie is about the sisters coming to understand each other, and director Curtis Hanson makes this real for the audience by walking us through the same process. It's a B movie but there's something more to it that makes it ill at ease alongside the sappy dramadies with which it would usually be placed, I can't my finger on it, but it's there.

B+