In Her Shoes

In Her Shoes is a 2005 American drama film based on the novel In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner. It is directed by Curtis Hanson with an adapted screenplay by Susannah Grant and stars Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette, Shirley MacLaine. The film focuses on the relationship between two sisters (Collette and Diaz), one of whom is dyslexic, and their grandmother (MacLaine).

Doctor">http://www.himfr.com/buy-Doctor_Hook/">Doctor HookThe film grossed $32,880,591 in the US and $49,322,439 in foreign markets for a worldwide total box office of $82,203,030 [1].

Rose (Toni Collette) and Maggie Feller (Cameron Diaz) are sisters with nothing in common but their shoe size. They were raised by their father Michael (Ken Howard) and stepmother (Candice Azzara) after their mother died in a car accident. Rose is the eldest; a plain and serious lawyer who is protective of Maggie despite her flaws. Maggie is a beautiful free spirit who is unable to hold a steady job (due to her virtual inability to read) and turns to alcohol and men for emotional and financial support. Rose grudgingly allows Maggie to move in with her when their stepmother throws her out of the house. Their already difficult relationship ends, however when Rose catches Maggie in bed with Jim (Richard Burgi), her boyfriend. Maggie subsequently disappears from Rose's life.

A few days before, while secretly looking through her father's desk for money, Maggie discovered a bundle of old greeting cards containing cash. She was astonished to discover that the cards were addressed to both her and Rose and were from their grandmother Ella (Shirley MacLaine). Now, homeless and without job prospects, Maggie travels to Delray Beach, Florida to find her and hopefully a new source of income.

When Ella first hears from Maggie, she invites her to stay in her home, partially out of guilt for abandoning her responsibilities as a grandmother. However, as time passes, Ella discovers that Maggie has come to do nothing but sunbathe and take money from her. Maggie asks Ella to finance an acting career for her; Ella agrees to match her salary dollar-for-dollar if she accepts a job with the assisted living section of her grandmother's retirement community. Meanwhile, Rose has decided to quit her job, become a dog - walker, and date Simon Stein (Mark Feuerstein) whom she had previously ignored. They become engaged.

Maggie befriends one of her patients, a blind retired professor of English literature (Norman Lloyd), who has asked Maggie to read works of poetry to him[2]. She does so, but with great difficulty. After asking if she is dyslexic, the professor encourages Maggie to continue reading to him while offering emotional support to her. Maggie finds a friend in the professor, the first person in her life who does not ridicule her difficulties with reading (and actually helps her to improve in this area). As time passes with the professor, Maggie's confidence grows not only with reading but with her general image of herself. In addition, she also becomes friendly with the residents of the retirement community. In doing so, Maggie discovers a livelihood that is greatly needed among the elderly women: a personal clothing shopper, an activity for which Maggie shows enormous talent. Ella (who also does not ridicule her difficulties with math) offers to run the financial aspects of the business. In the process, they become close and resolve their past history.

Ella has also secretly contacted Rose and sends a plane ticket asking her to come for a visit. Rose is excited to hear from her long-lost grandmother, but her pleasure quickly sours when she arrives and discovers that her sister already lives there. Long conversations with Ella reveal that their mother's car accident was an act of suicide (their mother struggled with a mental disorder and refused to take her medication). Ella never recovered from her death and never resolved her feelings towards her granddaughters, whom she felt contributed to her daughter's difficulties. The three women bond and learn to resolve their complicated past. At Rose's wedding, Ella also reconciles with Michael and Maggie reads a poem[3] to Rose as a wedding gift.

Rex Reed in the The New York Observer calls In Her Shoes "pure joy" and "a movie to cherish", arguing that Shirley MacLaine has "found her finest role since the Oscar-winning Terms of Endearment [...] funny and poignant, she uses abundant humanity and smart psychology to great advantage, lending her knowledge to the other actors generously." [4] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times states that the film "starts out with the materials of an ordinary movie and becomes a rather special one. The emotional payoff at the end is earned, not because we see it coming as the inevitable outcome of the plot, but because it arrives out of the blue and yet, once we think about it, makes perfect sense. It tells us something fundamental and important about a character, it allows her to share that something with those she loves, and it does it in a way we could not possibly anticipate. Like a good poem, it blindsides us with the turn it takes right at the end." [5]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle argues, on the other hand, that the film "is almost a true statement, almost an honest rendering of a sibling relationship and almost not a sentimental Hallmark card of a movie. But it compromises with itself and ends up in a limbo of meaninglessness, with writer Susannah Grant and director Curtis Hanson strenuously pretending to have told one kind of story, when actually they've told quite another." [6] Carino Chocano of the Los Angeles Times concurs, calling the film "a curious movie, hovering for upward of two hours between light and dark, truth and fake uplift, menace and mollycoddling." [7]

The film received a 75% rating from Rotten Tomatoes (112 fresh and 37 rotten reviews).