Customer Reviews

Friends with Money

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4 star:		(16)
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2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

Contrary to what the previews and trailers would lead you to believe, Nicole Holofcener's third film "Friends with Money" is not a belly laugh riot. In fact, though much of its concerns are humorous, it deals with very serious topics much like those that she dealt with in her previous film "Lovely and Amazing" .
Once again we are in West Los Angeles among the upwardly mobile with money, Nannies, Housekeepers and men that tend to lawns and pools.
Holofcener, like her East coast counterpart Woody Allen, is part of the scene on which she chooses to comment: she is not an interloper, she is one of them. Holofcener lives and works on the Westside of Los Angeles but she's enough of an artist to step back and objectively survey, comment and analyze all that she sees.
"Friends with Money's" is mainly an Olivia (Jennifer Anniston) concern as she is the house cleaner with friends mostly married and mostly upscale. Jane (a complex and pissed off Frances McDormand), Christine (as a usually conflicted and badly married Catherine Keener) and Franny (a warm hearted Joan Cusack) who are all rich and concerned about Olivia: eager to have her settled down so that they can go on with their lives. All three are alternately self-absorbed, and oblivious to the world around them yet love Olivia enough to care about what happens to her.
At her most unglamorous , Anniston makes the most of her role as a woman who is at a loss to make a success of her life: she is both emotionally and socially frozen and her only outlet is her friends...in other words she is lucky to have Jane, Franny and Christine...all of whom support her both emotionally and monetarily.
Director Holofcener knows this milieu very well and this transfers to the screen as compassion and understanding. She does not look down on those she chooses to eviscerate. Instead she steps back and reveals the foibles and fancies of a group of people of whom she feels a deep and thorough understanding. "Friends with Money" is a serious, complex and intelligent movie that despite its surface humor is a social and moral comment on par with anything that Woody Allen in his prime has ever committed to film..

Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) finds her friends, Franny (Joan Cusack), Christine (Catherine Keener) and Jane (Frances McDormand) are moving on without her. Franny stays at home with her two kids, while her husband (Greg Germann) works. Their relationship is good and their biggest decision is where they should make a large donation. Christine and her husband, David (Jason Isaacs) are screenwriters who work together, argue a lot and have decided to put a second floor extension on their house. Jane is a well-known fashion designer who loves her husband Aaron (Simon McBurney), who everyone thinks is gay. Olivia, on the other hand, cleans people's homes, having quit her job as a teacher at an exclusive school because the kids were making fun of her. She has trouble finding her place in life when all around her; everyone seems to be doing much better.

Nicole Holofcener's ("Lovely and Amazing") new film "Friends with Money" has some richly observed moments and some good laughs about adult friendship.

Olivia is Jennifer Aniston's best character since "The Good Girl". Unmotivated, slightly depressed and confused, Olivia clearly doesn't want a lot of pressure or obligation in her life, working as a maid in various people's homes. After she spends her day cleaning for others, she goes home and pines for the man she once loved, a married man who had an affair with her. Franny fixes her up with Mike (Scott Caan), her trainer, and they begin a relationship which doesn't seem to give Olivia a lot of joy.

As we watch Olivia wade through her pot-hazed life, Aniston portrays why this woman would feel this way, giving us a rich portrayal of a woman who doesn't do much. But we get why she would begin a relationship with Mike. We get why she calls her ex-boyfriend every night and hangs up. We understand her feelings of abandonment when she hangs around her once very close friends.

Really, with a supporting cast including Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack how could the film go wrong? Each is great as a very different friend to Olivia. Frances McDormand is the standout as Jane, the fashion designer who just turned 43 and seems to be experiencing a mid-life crisis. But Keener and Cusack are both very good as well. Each has their personal problems and problems with their relationship, but they are unique enough to be different.

There are some truly funny moments, the type of moments Woody Allen used to create for his very similar films. The dates between Olivia (Aniston) and Mike (Caan) are funny, unusual and painful to watch. Jane (McDormand) steals many of the scenes she is in, as she plays a fashion designer who is losing control. Unfortunately, I find myself getting annoyed at many of the same things her character does. I hope I can prevent going off the deep end. I'm getting close, but I hope I can watch stem the tide.

"Friends with Money" depicts a moment in these characters lives. The film is rich with detail, but spends time depicting their actions, their interactions and the results of their friendships. It doesn't move at a fast clip, but because we are watching the relationship unfold, we get the sense we are watching a group of real people. Like we are eavesdropping.

When Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) goes out to dinner with her three long-time best friends, Franny (Joan Cusack), Jane (Frances McDormand) and Christine (Catherine Keener), it always seems as though she's a bit of a fish out of water. Olivia is the only one that is single and lacks enough money and financial security to make her life really comfortable.

Her friends sort of know that she is constantly strapped for cash and that she now works as a maid, cleaning the houses of the wealthy Westsiders after she left her career as a schoolteacher because she just "couldn't handle it any more."

In Friends With Money, the wonderful new movie written and directed by Nicole Holofcener not much happens to Olivia but it doesn't matter because she - as well as well as her friends - are so well defined, funny and interesting. Does the amount of money you have really lead to happiness? Although, Olivier's yuppie friends are rich and the quality of their marriages differ, are their situations that different from Olivier's?

While Christine (Keener) and her husband and writing partner David (Jason Isaacs) spar over home renovations, fashion designer Jane (McDormand) has stopped washing her hair and seems to be going through some kind of forties mid-life crisis, wondering whether this is all there is. She spews hate at other drivers and at store managers, but her anger is often aimed at her sexually ambivalent husband Aaron (Simon McBurney) who seems to prefer the company of men to her.

The bourgeois comforts of Christine's career success appear to be breaking apart: is it a coincidence that David's petty insults about her weight gain and the neighbours' chilly reaction to their view-blocking annex escalate at the same time? Christine's tensions contrast with the parental bliss shared by her sympathetically affluent chum Franny (Cusak) and her wealthy husband, Matt (Greg Germann) who are about to donate two million dollars to their kid's school, even though the school probably doesn't need it.

Obviously, they all have money, but these self-obsessed, hard working people certainly have a lot issues to work through. Yet it is Olivia who seems to anchor the group. She's a wonderfully quirky character who goes from cosmetic counter to cosmetic counter in order to collect enough free samples to keep her complexion looking great. And when Franny hooks her up on a date with her luggish personal fitness instructor (Scott Caan) things don't work out exactly as Olivia planned.

The actresses are all phenomenal, the writing is pitch-perfect and the direction is crisp and droll. Poor Olivia - her large-living friends don't quite know what to make of her, or what to do for her. They obviously love her, but are driven to constantly ridicule her lack of ambition and her lack of income. And the fact that she smokes pot and has been carrying on an affair with a married man is a constant source of discomfort for them.

Aniston, especially shines, she's absolutely charming and very likable without dominating the film, which divvies up the goods with great equability among its idiosyncratic and often argumentative characters. Friends With Money is such an "LA" movie, and Holofcener, to her credit, has really managed to capture all the insecurities, petty quirks and foibles of this very upper-middle class Westside set, in all their self-congratulatory and pretentious grandeur. Mike Leonard August 06.

This is a very psychological and philosophical movie in my opinion. The other reviewers below did a great job of describing the particular, so I will share my experience of it and some insights that I didn't see fleshed out in other reviews.

First of all, if you are looking for sex, thriller action, high drama or comedy... this is not your movie. If you are looking for a cross section of life that portrays the existential angst inherent in friendship, marriage and life in general then you might find this movie very interesting.

This movie had round, well-developed characters. They were believable and the juxtaposition of personality types was fascinating. Jennifer Aniston did a decent job of portraying Olivia, but she had a lot of strong competition in the acting arena from the rest of the cast. In my opinion, this is a good thing!

There was a lot of development in the movie, but not much resolution. This can be good or bad depending upon what you are looking for in a movie. I found the ending interesting myself.

While the story may not knock your socks off, the portrayal of life in all its complexity just might. This is a movie that will make you think. It is movie that brings how the reality that life is bitter/sweet. It makes one reflect and I found that to have considerable value.

In "Friends With Money," writer-director Nicole Holofcener's third feature film, Jennifer Aniston plays a drab, depressed character without a husband, without a promising future, and (as the title implies) without any money. The film is promoted as an ensemble piece which includes Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, and Joan Cusack as three long-time friends of Olivia (Aniston's downtrodden teacher now working as a maid). However, "Friends With Money" begins with Olivia's story, centers around developments in her personal life, and ends with a possibility (rather than a promise) for her future.

Christine (Keener) realizes that she and her husband - screenwriting collaborators - don't communicate anymore. Confronted by her own mortality and a strikingly effeminate husband, fashion designer Jane (McDormand) fears that she's losing control. On the other hand, Frannie (Cusack) is happily married and independently wealthy, and has no significant worries except the basic inconveniences of daily existence.

We get to view these tangled relationships from every angle, and are privy to conversations between the four women, between two of the women gossiping about the others, between the individual couples, between friends and clients, between friends and lovers (or past/potential lovers), between the men, and various combinations of all of the above. It may be complicated keeping track, but it's certainly lots of fun.

Honestly written and sensitively portrayed, this movie reveals the comedy and drama of modern couples in Los Angeles trying to work things out, but "Friends With Money" shares the triumphs and frustrations of middle-aged women everywhere as they come to terms with their social, personal, familial, and sexual status in life.

Leslie Halpern, author of Reel Romance: The Lovers' Guide to the 100 Best Date Movies and Dreams on Film: The Cinematic Struggle Between Art and Science.

Once in a while a film with the power to keep viewers thinking long beyond the roll of the credits comes along. Writer/director Nicole Holofcener's "Friends with Money" is such a film. The characters are clearly and distinctly cut and their interactions so filled with interesting and psychologically-charged dialogue that it bares richness very rare in film.

It's not surprising that it garnered little respect and came and went quickly in the spring of 2006. Mismarketed as a light, comedic chick-flick, it is a strong and grippingly honest look at human nature - not a chick-flick and certainly not a comedy, despite the toothy grins of its stars on the DVD cover.

Jennifer Aniston portrays Olivia, leading the way as the token black sheep. Although her friends are affluent, accomplished and happily married (or so it would seem) she is living through a pathetic phase. A former teacher emotionally scarred by her students, she becomes a maid, scrubbing strangers' showers and rifling through their vanities for pricey face creams. So great is this obsession that she spends an afternoon acquiring free samples from department stores, as if to flip her finger at her unenviable economic status.

Joan Cusack portrays Franny, the wealthiest of the foursome whose husband Todd, played by Greg Germann, runs through her money like water. Her guilt over her trust fund status seethes beneath the surface of all she does, most especially her heated interactions with Olivia. Franny tries to compensate for her guilt by setting her up with personal trainer Mike, played by Scott Caan, a superficial stack of testosterone who only further serves to deplete Olivia's self-respect.

Christine and David, played respectively by Catherine Keener and Jason Isaacs, are constantly at odds with each other. A married couple rife with problems, they dodge their predicament in the form of an addition to their more than adequate home.

Meanwhile, Jane, portrayed by the incomparable Frances McDormand, has had as much she can take. Between twentysomethings cutting in line at Old Navy, pushy people stealing parking spots, those who simply don't say "thank you" when appropriate, and feeling marginalized as she approaches her mid-40's, the chip on her shoulder has a mind of its own. It doesn't help that her husband Aaron, played by Simon McBurney, comes off as a homosexual simply for being unconventional, most notably his sensitivity and fashion sense.

Christine mentions that he is gay at every possible opportunity, which Franny rails against. Eventually she tells Todd that Christine is merely projecting her dissatisfaction with her own marriage onto another to temper her own denial. Later on, Christine asks her son if her shoes are too "clunky," to which he merely shrugs. "Good boy," she says and smiles, as if his having no opinion on shoes means he is, indeed, a boy. Meanwhile, Jane matter-of-factly tells Aaron that the time she realized that all shampoos "had the same shit in them" was when she married him, with neither realizing her latent rage.

It is these kind of little nuances that make this film so engaging and original - and a missed opportunity at the Oscars.

Every nook and cranny of "Friends With Money" is downright beautiful in its honesty about human nature. It morals are not derived from its many storylines, which may or may not resolve themselves by the end. Instead, they come in the realization that, like it or not, this is how we all are. Imperfect. Talking behind each others' backs. Unable to cope. Keeping secrets from those we supposedly love and care about. Anyone who can accept this part of themselves will find in "Friends With Money" a basic thesis for life itself.

Indeed, as Olivia puts it, "I got problems."

When I saw the trailer for this movie I was excited because of the great cast, and because it looked like it might be sort of mean/funny, but after seeing it I was disappointed. It wasn't particularly funny (as the trailer led me to believe); in fact it was rather painful at times. I thought the acting was terrific, though, even from Aniston, who I don't particularly like. (It was the other actresses who brought me in.) I did think some of the writing was spot-on (the blind date scene was priceless) and I think part of what I didn't like was that some of the situations the characters find themselves in mirrored my own life a little too closely and that was why the film bothered me. I also felt that some of the men's parts were very underwritten and a little thankless. (Particularly Scott Caan and Jason Isaacs, both good actors who deserve better written parts.) I felt that the whole movie was from the women characters' point of view and I would have liked a little more background on the men and their take on what was going on in the various relationships. I realize the movie is supposed to focus on the women, but it just felt really unbalanced to me. (I'm female.) I thought Frances McDormand was great, but then she always is. Ditto Catherine Keener. Overall, I'd recommend this as a rental but with the caveat that it won't appeal to everyone. It's not a happy film and you probably won't like it if you like movies where everything is tied up neatly at the end. I think it could have used a rewrite and some fleshing out of some scenes and maybe a little back story on some of the relationships. This is hard to do in a "slice of life right now movie" but some writers are able to do it. All in all, not a great movie but not a bad one either.

Friends with Money was a pretty good comedy movie with a bit of seriousness and truth thrown in. It's about all these different couples who talk to each other, and then when the girlfriends and boyfriends (or wives and husbands) leave their friends home (or restaurant or wherever the meeting place was) on the drive home, they criticize their friends and basically talk about them behind their backs.

I got the feeling on many occasions that the wives and girlfriends were more concerned with being jealous of each other instead of actually caring about the friendships they've developed with each other. I think that's part of reality anyway- secretly we do become jealous of our friends when they're able to accomplish something we haven't been able to yet.

There's also an important message behind this film- don't take things too seriously or you won't be able to enjoy life. Of course, the more obvious message is that it really stinks how the world has to constantly revolve around money, but I got more out of this movie than just that.

Anyway, the film was really good. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's a romantic comedy in the beginning. This movie works for just about anybody. You have to allow time to get to know the characters and the way they act to really enjoy the storyline. Each character has a separate personality from the others, which makes you wonder how they all became friends in the first place.

Another thing I enjoyed was the way many of the friends would start out acting like they were getting along great with each other, only for their conversations to end on an angry note until they met again!

All the characters were really good throughout the movie, and there was more than enough exciting plot twists to make it a movie worth watching.

I'm a huge fan of Catherine Keener, and had high hopes for this film. I disagree with the New Yorker review posted here -- although they are correct when they say Jennifer Aniston is a limited actress, I think she shines by far the brightest in this uneven, annoying "indie" flick. The characters in this movie are so maniacally irritating and unlikeable, I may have to reconsider my usual preference for "character-driven" films and move grudgingly toward viewing movies with explosions and car chases. The script is uneven and unbelievable, featuring people unlike any I have ever met -- and to which I certainly cannot relate. It takes a few cliche rich, whiny Los Angeleans and tries to make us feel sorry for them when, in truth, they are much easier to despise. How can anybody care enough about these characters to make this movie worth the emotional investment? Not possible.

As we get older our differences become more pronounced. This film, while not exactly indicative of the east coast world I live in, still has many truths. These people may not be people I know but the situations, the subtleties, the feel of the film is all honest.

The film says all the things that we all do and say and sense in others. Sometimes the conversations I find myself or often times others around me embroiled in as an adult just stuns me. Furniture, film tastes, kids, money, paving my driveway. It's funny. It can also be a bit sad. This film captures this dynamic so well. While no masterpiece it is still a simple gem.

It was also nice to see a film about women for a change. As a guy I can say it was refreshing. Seems women go through the same stuff guys do after all.