+ Best Dramedy of the Year
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| The four great actresses top this simple poster for Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money |
Friends with Money is the third feature by great New Yorker writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said (2013)).
Olivia is the black sheep in her group of friends, who have all three married and become wealthy. She is single, lonely and works as a maid. But as it turns out, she is not the only one of them who has problems.
Holofcener has established herself as a strong chronicler of modern American urbanite lives and issues, and her intelligent and warm, sardonic humor shines through in Friends, which is filled with solely realistic characters.
They, - especially the ones around Olivia, who have "made it" and are off-puttingly aware of this at times, - are sometimes unsympathetic, but through the efforts of a great cast, we still never have enough of them:
Jennifer Aniston (Cake (2014)) proves her weight as a fine dramatic actress, and Catherine Keener (Into the Wild (2007)) and Jason Isaacs (Good (20008)) share especially one piercingly written and played scene SPOILER as a man and wife whose marriage has really hit the rocks. Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge (2014), TV-miniseries) and Simon McBurney (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)) are also great as a married couple who are pulled in each their own problematic directions as well, and particularly McDormand shines as a menopausal woman with an anger problem.
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| Simon McBurney and Jennifer Aniston in Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money |
The details:
The score is composed by the great Rickie Lee Jones (Femme (2013)) with Craig Richey (A Marine Story (2010)), but unfortunately, it doesn't add very much to the film.
Friends with Money is a fine film about menopause and midlife crisis for married and unmarried people, more than a film much about the issue of money between friends. One might have wanted to stay with the characters and story a little longer. Also, the film isn't funny enough to excel as a drama-comedy, and the drama also isn't really stirring enough for it to break out as more than 'good' as a drama.
Still this is a sensitive and smart film with some lovely actors.
Since Enough Said, Holofcener has jumped back on the TV wagon, and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that she comes out with a movie for us again some time soon.
Related posts:
Enough Said (2013) or, The Southern California Mix-Up
Enough Said (2013) or, There Is One For All of Us (by guest reviewer)
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
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| This poster for Nicole Holofcener's Friends with Money presents the film as a happy-go-lucky, a-laugh-a-minute chick-flick, - which it isn't |
Cost: 6.5 mil. $
Box office: 18.2 mil. $
= Box office success
[Friends with Money premiered as the opening night film at Sundance January 19 and runs 88 min. It opened wide to 4.9 mil. $, but was mostly a limited release at less than 600 screens in North America, where it grossed 13.3 mil. $ (73.1 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 1.3 mil. $ (7.1 %) and the UK with 0.8 mil. $ (4.4 %). Friends with Money is fresh at 72 % with a 6.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Friends with Money?
