'Hanging Up' is off the hook
WESLEY MORRIS
EXAMINER FILM CRITIC Feb. 18, 2000
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Diane Keaton movie is too screwy to be really funny
SOMEWHERE between Betty Friedan and Helen Reddy stands
Diane Keaton. The
women she's played are a staggering congress
representing female independence, though her neurotic
shtick often seemed to be apologizing for trying to
make it after all. Her notions of quirky,
do-it-yourself feminism always made room for General
Foods International Coffee moments among three
sisters, biological and cosmic alike. "Interiors,"
"Crimes of the Heart," "The Lemon Sisters," "The First
Wives Club" and, now, the deadliest of these
felicitous sorority movies - "Hanging Up."
Starring Keaton, Meg Ryan and Lisa Kudrow, the story
unites the half-lives
of three slapstick women. What's cruel and unusual is
how deeply unfunny it is. The comedy comes on cute and
noisy, and ends in a fit of female bonding so sweet
you'll be reaching for the insulin. Keaton directs
"Hanging Up" as though she's longing for all those
embarrassing post-"9 to 5" comedies about the stress
of working mothers. (Keaton made a box-office comeback
in 1987's "Baby Boom," the sub-genre's nadir.)
Working from a script by real sisters Nora and Delia
Ephron, Keaton moves things along like she's got the
keys to an Oprah-friendly "King Lear," with three
versions of Mary Tyler Moore playing each of the
sisters, and poor, old Walter Matthau as the dying
dad.
"Hanging Up" is an Avon party, black-clad in Donna
Karan and littered with tics, stammers and fidgeting,
mostly courtesy of Ryan, who under Keaton's direction
has never been more irritating. When calibrated, her
screwball artistry is a fun throwback, but the
pratfalls, sidelong glances, frustrated line
deliveries and giddy, mock-appalled facial expressions
are like watching Jennifer Love Hewitt star in "I Want
To Live!" Keaton's clearly found camaraderie; she
loves Ryan's physical comedy and lets her go nuts. So
Ryan spends most of the film looking like she's trying
to wake up from a nightmare and kvetching over what a
nagging neurotic she's become. "I feel like the blond,
bland actress in one of those '50s movies, who's short
and always suffering," she complains. Now, that's film
criticism.
Ryan plays Eve, the middle child who's been stuck with
the responsibility of caring for their dying pa, who
hasn't been right since ma (Cloris Leachman catching
the Agnes Moorhead spirit) walked out years ago, tired
of the wife-and-mother gig. Eve's trying to get her
two manic, aloof sisters - Georgia (Keaton) and Maddy
(Lisa Kudrow) - to help her.
Dad's hit rock bottom and has to be hospitalized. But
Georgia's too busy to deal with it: She's on her cell
phone with Vanity Fair scandal-monger Maureen Orth and
planning the fifth anniversary of her self-titled
magazine. And Maddy, the flaky baby of the three, is
in denial, too preoccupied with her dog and her role
on a soap to believe her daddy's dying. (What exactly
is wrong with Matthau's irascible dad remains a
mystery: Is it Tourette's? Jack Lemmon withdrawal?)
Writer/director Nora Ephron seems to have given Keaton
extensive crib notes. The qualities of Keaton's
previous outings as a director - the fleeting,
contemplative "Heaven" and "Unstrung Heroes" - are
missing. But she does make movies the way ex-beau
Warren Beatty does: with a lot of self-love. Keaton,
though, is far less ambitious and more democratic in
her technique, making sure Kudrow, who exists mostly
in reaction shots, and Ryan look as fabulous as she
does. If your girlfriends won't make sure you're lit
right, who will?
Keaton's shot-making is "Hanging Up's" most criminal
offense: The three sisters power-walking side-by-side
down a hospital corridor, intercut with quick glimpses
of their calves and the black pumps that keep them
flexed; Keaton on the cover of a magazine in a power
suit with a cigar in her mouth; and that last awful
sequence in which the girls have a big flour fight.
The thesis in the Ephrons' adaptation of Delia's book
is that these ultra-successful women's lives are so
hectic that they're connected only by telephone. It's
a peculiarly L.A. story that Keaton coats with enough
emotional Teflon to withstand any tragedy. But what
grates most heavily in this overly written editorial
to "having it all" is the nonstop chaos. It's as if
each of these women has tossed her Mary Tyler Moore
hat in the air and has to spend the movie trying to
figure out why it hasn't come down.
Movie Review
'Hanging Up'
CAST Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter
Matthau
DIRECTOR Keaton
WRITERS Delia and Nora Ephron, adapted from Delia's
novel
RATED R
THEATERS Metreon, AMC 1000, Kabuki, Century Plaza
(South San Francisco)
EVALUATION *
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