Surprisingly,
this new film form actress/director Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), and writer Nora
Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle) got off to a strong start.
Meg
Ryan plays one of three sisters who finds her life turned upside down when she
must take care of her sick father (brilliantly played by Walter Matthau). Siblings
Lisa Kudrow (Friends) and Keaton decide to leave most of the emotional load to
do gooder Ryan.
So
far, Hanging Up has been universally panned by critics. It's been called everything
from dishonest to charmless. Although this isnÕt a great film, it does
feature winning performances form Ryan and Matthau. It's also one of the over-rated
Ephron's strongest writing efforts, at least for the first half of the film. It's
a sometimes brooding, harsh and bittersweet look at the tangled complexities of
family.
Hanging
Up really falters when the story deals with the sisters themselves. This is where
the story gets really pretentious. Quite frankly, I found Keaton and Kudrow quite
irrelevant and unnecessary--neither come across as very effective. As far as I
can gather, the sister element is only there to create dramatic tension--tension
that seems all too fake. There is also a dumb subplot in which Ryan must Care
for Kudrow's sick dog strictly for comic relief.
There
are moments in Hanging Up that are very real, unfortunately this is a film that
degenerates into your average Ephron picture. Instead of keeping things real,
Ephron takes the easy way out and wraps everything up in a neat little bow in
the last five minutes.
