Hanging Up (2000)

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

I caught this on late night TV, having missed it in the theaters originally. I wasn't expecting brilliance, but just HOW bad this was - given all the talent involved (Keaton, Ryan, Kudrow, Ephron sisters) it was pretty shockingly poor.One thing that stood out to me (in 2014) is that filmmakers need to be more careful about centering pictures on things like phones or computers. The technology changes SO fast, and it dates the film just horribly. Think about movies from the 40s-60s; they often seem ageless. But nobody today can see those big clunky cellphones from 1999 without falling over laughing...my god! the giant antennas! lol!What we DO forget though -- and this is endemic throughout the entire film -- is how costly a cellphone was in 1999. It was something only a person of wealth and privilege would own, or if you did own it, could use it round the clock, with no concern over every expensive minute (unlimited chat was unknown then). Simply that the Mozell clan can afford to yak constantly on expensive phones was a clear, elitist signal that these folks are staggering rich -- BEFORE you notice that they all live in giant Hollywood mansions, drive huge SUVs and can travel about on a whim.Screenwriters Delia and Nora Ephron based this on their own lives, as wealthy Hollywoodistas, but it just displays their cluelessness about how ordinary Americans live or deal with the universal problem of aging parents, illness and death. It trivializes a whole serious and very human subject. In his last film, Walter Matthau is touching if for no other reason than he was actually very ill and just hanging on; he died a few months later.Diane Keaton directs this mess very awkwardly, though she was given a script that I think had to have been close to unfilmable. For starters, it is heavily autobiographical -- the Ephrons are a sister clan of successful writers, whose parents WERE successful Hollywood screenwriters. That means everyone involved was way too close to the subject or milieu to be objective.Meg Ryan is attractive here, pre-facelift, though she is playing the same role as in many other films (goofy overwhelmed chick). Keaton should have known better than to cast herself; she is 16-18 years older than the other actresses and far too old to be their sister (we see them all playing together as as similar-age siblings in flashbacks!).The main star here is....the lavish sets, the art direction of which totally distracts from the plot. Ryan's character lives in a Tuscan mansion of vast proportions and decor, despite no visible means of income. Matthau is shown in an unbelievably posh Modernist mansion you enter on a bridge over a pool (and it's been seen in FAR too many other movies and commercials to work here as a believable family home).The final straw: at the excruciating end (the film is 95 minutes but feels like 3 hours), the sisters come together after Dad's sudden death for Thanksgiving dinner. They get in a cutesy, phony food fight throwing flour on each other's posh black Donna Karan outfits (*plugged by NAME!)....now, who without a maid or cleaning service, would throw FLOUR all over themselves and the kitchen floor, just before Thanksgiving dinner? Nobody. Only someone rich, and with servants, would remotely consider it.Conclusion: just painful to watch, unfunny and snobbishly elitist. Avoid.

Only saw the end of this, but it's interesting in the dynamics and relationships of three good actresses, and the last performance of venerable Walter Matheau, playing, as always, a curmudgeon. There's something courageous and amazing about an actor playing a dying person just before they die- art merging with life, like in On Golden Pond (spent a day on that lake-Squam, and it is hauntingly restful). The movie has both fluffy and frivolous relationships between the sisters and heavy scathing honest transgressions between Meg and her drunk Dad.It was timely to run across this now, because in a further intersection of life and art, I have to call the nursing home now, and see if my mother, 5 days without food or water, is still with us.

i thought this movie was an amazing drama. it expressed what it's like to deal with the struggles of everyday life and also other difficult obstacles. this movie was one of the ONLY movies i have ever seen to truly express relationships between sisters. i loved it. i also thought it was creative because it wasn't OVERLY dramatic to the point where you lose touch with the reality of the situation. it just seemed like real sisters, with a real father, living real lives and i love that. i think the cast was amazing and they made some of the situations comical, but they didn't throw it in your face. this movie made me think, it made me cry, and it made me appreciate my sisters. i loved it.

The best scene in this Diane Keaton-directed film has drunken dad Walter Matthau showing up at a kid's birthday party bellowing and vulgar, but it doesn't belong in a comedy. It's more like something out of "Shoot The Moon", which Keaton starred in, and would fit much better in a film with a darker tone. "Hanging Up" wobbles around in search of appropriate emotions, but Keaton just can't get a consistent rhythm going. Her performance as the eldest of three unhappy sisters is also wan (she's winging it), however Meg Ryan as the middle sister has some fabulous moments: she hugs a coffee machine, she tries to convince her husband that driving a wrecked truck is going to work for her, she tells off her father but cries because she loves him. This is a performance well worth watching, but the picture definitely needed a director with a tighter grip on the reins. **1/2 from ****