TNMC

 Lesson number one in how not to make a movie. Focus your movie on a type of behavior that ticks off large numbers of people. This will instantly generate significant ill will which should do well to sink the movie regardless of what else is in it. This is of course the mistake that Hanging Up makes in rather spectacular fashion. It actually focuses on people who spend all their time glued to their cell phone, oblivious to the rest of the world. It's bad enough I have to dodge these people while driving. Why on earth would I want to see a movie about them?

This is a movie that could have successfully been made with none of the actors in the same place at the same time. They all spend their time on the phone rather than interacting in person. I said that this was enough to sink the movie regardless of what else was put into it. Luckily they decided to make all of the characters irritating in some fashion. This eliminates any possible need you might have to try and find the silver lining to this cloud.

If you really must know what the movie is about I'll tell you, but only grudgingly. Walter Matthau is an old mean drunk. His mind is going so his daughter (Meg Ryan) takes him to the hospital. Meg then spends the rest of the movie yelling at her sisters (Lisa Kudrow and Diane Keaton) over her cell phone for not helping her out. When she's not doing that she's having flashbacks where we get to see that both of her parents are miserable wretches.

This might lead you to believe that we are to develop sympathy for Meg's character. That might be true if I wasn't already really annoyed at her cell phone antics. I don't have sympathy for people with cell phones who nearly hit me with their cars in real life. Therefore I don't have any sympathy for movie characters who succeed in hitting other people with their car because they were too busy yapping into that precious phone. To be honest the only time during the movie where I wasn't really annoyed at her was when she was parading around in a t-shirt so thin it would have won her first place in any spring break wet t-shirt contest, without using any water. I don't mean to sound like a pig by mentioning this. I just wanted to point out how desperate I was for a distraction.

Oddly enough that didn't win the prize for greatest distraction in the movie. That distinction went to Meg's hair which appeared to have been styled by being gnawed on by rabid beavers.

To avoid sounding totally negative I'll say something nice. I liked the dog. The monstrous St. Bernard was fairly entertaining as he chewed his way through the scenery (literally). Those big sad eyes pretty much captured my mood at being trapped in a theater with this movie too.

- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it