Here is another female-helmed movie without point or rhyme or reason. The director gets a few characters together and puts them in situations where they do what they do without ever coming to any kind of realisation about anything, or any sort of climax or resolution. These movies are watchable but forgettable.This is the one with Jennifer Aniston, who seems much younger than her circle of friends played by - who else - Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack. They have husbands who are barely glimpsed except for one Roman Polanski doppelganger whom everyone thinks is gay. The movie suggests maybe he is... or isn't. It's never resolved, and you find yourself wondering what the point is.Aniston quits her job and becomes a maid for what must be a greatly reduced pay scale in order to justify the movie's title. However the central theme of her making less money than her friends is also totally undercooked and not explored in any meaningful way. If it wasn't called "Friends with money" you'd probably not even notice that that was intended to be the theme of the movie. What sticks out far more is Aniston's relative youth and beauty in contrast to her well off yet miserable, unhappily married friends, as women always are in movies like this. It hurts to say she was miscast however, because she is the movie's only source of life.

This film does have things going for it. The production values are high, the cast is impeccable - Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener to name a few. And I guess the format of a group of mature age friends living suburban lives is valid. Many French films are based on such ensembles. But I found that there is way, way, too much dialogue in Friends With Money. Characters have to express every little feeling they have, and just about every character has a scene with every other character in which to discuss every detail of their lives, and of their friends' lives. And also the plot is weak -- a group of friends who are rich have a single friend who is working as a maid. Well, how exciting. The movie Spanglish with Adam Sandler covered some of the same territory. In that case a Hispanic maid comes with her daughter to live with a rich LA family. But Spanglish had more passion, more interesting twists and turns. Spanglish was about the maid's genuine wish for her daughter not to be swallowed up by this family who were so generous to her. Friends With Money means well, but I didn't warm to it.

Friends with Money (2006)Another interesting Nicole Holofcener film starring Catherine Keener, though not as inventive or funny or convincing as their more recent "Please Give." This is a tale of three and a half couples, and that's a lot of main characters to establish, especially given their relative similarity--all are white, well heeled, urban (and urbane), educated, and articulate. They are all friends, and there are some establishing scenes with all seven characters talking around a table, a little like some of Woody Allen's restaurant scenes.Oh, Woody Allen? Speaking of white, well heeled, etc. etc. Though being Jewish is not a salient part of the mix here, removing a series of stereotypes and jokes that Allen uses so well. The humor and satire and sometimes social criticism is largely cultural, and seemingly mainstream (since we all wish we were rich, at least on some days). But Woody Allen is frankly a better writer than Holofcener, at least so far (again, "Please Give" does resonate better), and I think his sense of physical presence, with the camera weaving around heads, or in other scenes of simple ambiance and old fashioned beauty, is not matched here.And this matters--the writing and camera-work--because there is no single event that turns the story here. In fact, there is very little that happens at all except a glimpse into a little bit of America, like "Sex and the City" (which Holofcener was involved with) but without the single girl on the prowl edge. If this movie is striving for poignancy within the ordinary, it gets halfway there, and half of poignant is something insufficient, yet still interesting.Most of all, the movie has a cast of great actors, all of them. The four women at the center of this (sound familiar?) are stellar: McDormand, Keener, Cusack (Joan), and Aniston (who plays the single girl of the bunch). The husbands are less known, and maybe less effective, though the gay-leaning husband of the McDormand character, played by Simon McBurney. And you can watch the movie just for the acting, and for some of the scenes, which are either powerful or funny in ways that make the other scenes, which are neither, worth waiting through. None of it is bad, so the people who give this a one star rating just didn't click with the slice-of-life aspect at work here.For the best short summary of the plot and the characters and actors, check out the editorial review at Amazon for the DVD (better than wikipedia this time). Notice also the range of reviews by customers, from top to bottom.

Choral movies are quite fashionable nowadays, probably because attractive by themselves. Obviously, the risk with them lies in the difficulty and sometimes the failure in giving the right time and equal space to each character, ending up in disregarding some of them in favour of others. This risk is unfortunately evident in "Friends with money", where some characters and situations live and appear as well rounded, whereas others are totally failed and appear as marginal and not sufficiently developed. In general, I noticed that all the stories involving the married couples are quite secondary in respect to Olivia's single life and his encounters with two men. Indeed, Jane, very well interpreted by Frances Macdormand, is the only married woman who manages to be convincing in her middle-forties' crisis and depression, while Christine and Franny appear as immature women, lacking some definite personality and remaining a little annoying till the end. As far as male characters are concerned, the three married ones are completely out of place, I would say useless, being the few words they speak so poor, so marginal, that one may ask why their roles were not cut off. On the contrary, the roles of Mikes and Marty, Olivia's two boyfriends, are more focused, becoming the allegorical representation of two male prototypes: the roguish who exploits women, the first one, and the kind, delicate, sensitive, the latter. Marty in particular, despite his very short appearance, proves to be the most rounded, developed and realistic character, with whom we cannot but sympathize and interpret as a redemption for the male gender and the just reward for a former exploited woman. Jennifer Aniston, usually tied to clichè roles and characters, surprisingly offers a good and credible performance, being probably Olivia's concerns the nearest to the life of common people. In the end, the movie started with a good idea, lost it in progress, and gained interest with the appearance of Marty's character. The final result is a pleasant, but sometimes superficial and banal romance-drama that does not get to leave the viewer fully satisfied.