Hanging Up (2000)

Hanging Up (2000): Dir: Diane Keaton / Cast: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthou, Adam Arkin: Comedy about communication where three sisters contact mainly by phone. Oldest sister Diane Keaton is too busy working on her own magazine. Youngest sister Lisa Kudrow stars in a failing soap opera. Meg Ryan plays middle sister who is left to care for their senile father. Ryan is married and has a son but she also has a bad driving record. Her conversation with her husband about her third driving mishap is an unnecessary subplot. Keaton does a fine job directing despite the limitations in production and obvious conclusion. What does work for her is the casting of three effective leads including herself. Ryan is sympathetic as a woman who cares for her father yet is exhausted from the stress of her own lifestyle. Keaton is effective as a high profile business woman whose public relations career keep her from confronting real issues. Most of her scenes are through phone conversations with a frustrated Ryan. Kudrow is seen briefer but effective. Walter Matthou is given the funniest lines as their father whose fate is obvious, but he steals his moments. Other roles are cardboard and more or less support the leads and do nothing for the formula driven screenplay. It is a comedy about communication and relationships for father / daughters. Others may wish to hang up on it. Score: 4 ½ / 10

I have seem some awful films before (House of the Dead, Battlefield Earth et c), but Hanging Up was by far the worst movie ever. I will willingly watch any movie, Lifetime movies included, over Hanging Up. It was by far the most excruciating experience of my life. I wanted to die; suicide was an option somewhere around 15 minutes in. Half way through the movie I was convinced that Hell would be a blessing in comparison. I urge everyone to buy a copy of this movie and destroy it so that there won't be a singe copy of this available, thereby saving the future generations of America. Everyone who played a part in this movie, especially Meg Ryan, should be brought up on war crimes for taking part in Hanging Up.

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.

HANGING UP (2000) *1/2 Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthau, Adam Arkin, Cloris Leachman, Jesse James, Edie McClurg.When did Nora Ephron lose her razor sharp comic bile and effervescent wit? I'd be hard pressed to guess at her debacle at directing the laugh free `Mixed Nuts' that made her directing debut practically inauspicious. Since then she has rehashed `When Harry Met Sally.' (one of my all time favorite comedies) AND `Sleepless In Seattle' (with 1998's `You've Got Mail' which was a rehash of `The Shop Around The Corner') and I've also noticed her comedy flair has gotten a nasty streak of meanness throughout. Her latest offering is a joint effort with her sister Delia (based on her autobiographical account of their colorful screenwriter father) that quite frankly is a mirthless, `dramedy' (a term I never wholeheartedly embraced; sounds freakish don't you think?) about three sisters approaching middle age and enough dysfunction for several sitcoms to trudge through.Eve, Georgia and Maddy (Ryan, Keaton - who directed this mess, and Kudrow, respectively) are the squabbling sisters who all seem attached by some sort of metaphorical umbilical cord (i.e. the phone) who are at constant odds with each other and themselves in midst of a family crisis: their randy, colorful alcoholic screenwriter father Lou (the film's saving grace Matthau, who gives a heartfelt turn in a too-true-to-life interpretation of a life fully lived) whose mental decline is only preceded by his physical one: he's slowly dying.But it seems that Eve, a professional party planner married with a son, is the only one who recognizes this in spite of her hectic pell mell existence and clumsiness (i.e. accident prone to a fault) she does the only reasonable alternative: she puts their dad in the hospital after an attempt in a nursing home that only offered disastrous results.Georgia is a power hungry magazine magnate busy putting her self-congratulatory 5th anniversary edition of her eponymous zine to bed while her ditzy younger sis Maddy is trying to maintain a role on a soap opera with middling results.The film suffers many things, largely a decent script with a peppering of listless one-liners that fall flat or the hackneyed long-in-the-tooth premise of a dying loved one's pleas for his children to love one another (a noble theme true but here it feels like pulling teeth with no ether!) The other sin in the golden rule of comedy is there is nothing likable about the `realistic' account of one family's attempt to deal with a crisis. All three sisters are sooo annoying and whining and ultimately uncaring that when they finally get together by the film's inevitable climax it feels contrived and completely unconvincing. Why should we care about any of these characters in the first place? They're all too wrapped up in their ME ME way of life that it's actually repulsive.Matthau, with his basset hound's face in the comedy visage of Mount Rushmore, delivers a fine professional turn and I hate to say this but the fact he has been facing some hard times with his health only adds another layer to his role that raises the film a half star just for his casting.There are so many unanswered questions I hope the three other stars may consider on their next feature film. For Ryan - who I absolutely adore except here she is given the thankless task of being the glue here - When are you going to do a comedy with your meant-to-be older sister/mother Goldie Hawn, who she seems to be channeling obviously in her one-too-many scenes with a behemoth St. Bernard (shades of `Seems Like Old Times'); for Keaton - who will forever be Annie Hall to me - When did you stop being funny? Perhaps the second `Father of the Bride' flick? And finally to Kudrow - who's always solidly funny - When oh when are you going to stretch again and do another character (i.e. `The Opposite of Sex' in which she was deliciously snippy) and not another variation of your classic airhead Phoebe from `Friends'? These unsolved mysteries are now at Robert Stack's disposal.