Maggie (Diaz) can’t hold a job, steals petty cash, drinks too much, sleeps around, and enrages anyone close to her, especially Rose (Collette), a Philadelphia lawyer whose constant call to care for her reckless younger sister keeps her life careful and her self-image low. Yet the film opens with Rose bedding a hunky law partner, only to have to get up and rescue a drunken Maggie for the umpteenth time. She tries to drop her at her father (Ken Howard) and step-mother’s (Candice Azzara) house, but Sydelle (a wonderfully obnoxious step-mother name) has had enough and Maggie ends up at Rose’s again. Maggie tries to get a job, but does not change her other habits until she takes off for Miami to look up her long lost grandmother, Ella (MacLaine).
The film is a romantic relationship drama with comic passages, but is still loaded with surprises, especially when the story moves to the Florida retirement community where Maggie moves in with Ella. Not since “Being John Malkovich” has Diaz delivered such a thorough performance. She’s hardly been challenged to do so, but Hanson and the rest of his cast do just that with outstanding results. After wowing the retired old men by sunbathing in a ridiculously scant bikini, Maggie, under Ella’s guidance, finally begins to grow up, clothes shopping for the senior women and working at a nursing home where she befriends a blind, former college professor.
Sound hokey? Not in Hanson’s and screenwriter Susannah Grant’s hands. Nearly every cliché is avoided. Besides MacLaine’s impeccable timing and mastery of nuance, the older actors deliver grounded, witty performances, especially Francine Beers as the wisecracking Mrs. Lefkowitz, Jerry Adler as Ella’s suitor Lewis, and Norman Lloyd as the professor.
Meanwhile, Rose, who’s had to endure Maggie’s bedding the hunky lawyer, quits her job, takes up dog-walking, and re-meets Simon (Mark Feuerstein), another lawyer from her old firm. Simon is a complete sweetheart who loves great food, the Sixers, and Rose, regardless of all the things she’s always thought were wrong with her. The relationship eventually stalls because Rose won’t talk about her family, especially her sister, but a last act plot device brings the two story threads together.
While both actresses face challenges, Toni Collette cuts through crap at all the best moments. She also delivers an impassioned speech to Simon about why, even though her sister will drive him crazy, she will never give her up. Collette’s bathroom scene with Diaz when they discover together the truth about their mother’s untimely death is worth the whole movie.
Trivia Note: Look for Ivana Milicevic, whom you may have just seen as the seductive neighbor in “Just Like Heaven” as (in photos only) the sisters’ late mother.
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