SNMR 6.30: "Friends With Money"

Tonight's SNMR feature is "Friends with Money" (2006, R, 88 minutes), starring Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Jason Isaacs, Simon McBurney and Greg Germann. The film was written and directed by Nicole Holofcener.

PLOT SUMMARY: Four long time female friends get together regularly to discuss their lives. Three of the friends are married and rich. One isn't either married or rich, so she becomes the topic of frequent conversation. To Olivia (Aniston) their married lives are perfect while she's struggling to get by working as a maid. Just beneath the surface of the married couples seemingly perfect lives are the problems that can go along with marriage and family.

MY OPINION: The title of this film should be Dysfunctional Friends with Money. But I guess it's not because there has to be a little suspense, right? Well, no. Actually there's no suspense whatever as it's painfully obvious right from the start how broken and flawed each person is with in the circle of friends.

Frankly I only had interest in this movie because Jennifer Aniston is in it. This film is very slow, almost to the point of being boring. However dull it is, it does paint an interesting picture of dysfunctionality in its many forms and how that affects the relationships between friends. The fact that the writer and director are the same person I generally like but in this case it doesn't matter because of the subject matter. Thankfully, this film has a running time of just under 90 minutes, though it easily could have been longer, depending on how much dysfuntion we were meant to see.

Individually the four women lead characters appear to have bonded well in real life, which is one part of good screen chemistry. Even this however, can't save a weak script.

I would recommend this movie to you only if you're a fan of one of the actresses, all of whose movies you must have in your DVD collection.

**½ out of *****