Hanging Up
USA 2000
Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Los Angeles, the present. Eve Marks realises her addled, elderly, ex-screenwriter father must go into hospital. Her two sisters, soap-opera starlet Maddy and egotistical magazine editor Georgia, are too wrapped up in their own lives to share significantly the responsibility of caring for him, despite Eve's efforts to involve them.
Eve loves her father, but their relationship has always been prickly: she frequently flashes back to difficult moments they've had in the past, and she also has difficulty dealing with her cold, distant mother, who estranged herself from the family years earlier.
Eve is also continually frustrated with the behaviour of her two sisters, despite the sometimes grudging affection the three of them share. She and Maddy become incensed when Georgia, who has flown out to LA from her home in New York to give a speech to a women's group, uses their father's illness as a tear-jerking way to win over her audience. Directly following the speech the sisters receive a call telling them that their father has slipped into a coma. They rush to his bedside and reconcile their differences as they wait, hoping for his recovery. He awakens momentarily only to utter his last words.
A few months later, the sisters, bonded in grief and getting along fabulously, throw flour at one another as they cook a Thanksgiving dinner.
Review
Sisterhood is powerful. So why, in Hanging Up, does it have to smell so bad - like a cross between musty perfume and an overpowering air freshener? Co-screenwriters (and sisters) Delia and Nora Ephron (the latter directed Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail) bring out the worst impulses in each other, and it's frustrating: Hanging Up occasionally brushes up against some thorny family issues, particularly the problems inherent in dealing with a difficult, ageing parent, and sometimes it almost tricks us into believing it just might deal with them in an original and believable way. But the Ephrons always end up going for the predictable jokes (it doesn't help that they've got eternally cute moppet Meg Ryan as their handmaiden), and the picture's resolution feels cowardly at best. It's laced with bittersweetness, but not nearly enough of it - as if the Ephrons needed to make sure they wouldn't scare off all the women's book groups, the Oprah fans, the frazzled and sensitive soccer moms out there in the audience.
In that respect, Hanging Up is the worst kind of 'women's' picture, the kind that sets out to give women what they supposedly want in a movie even as it seems to be painting by numbers, insulting everyone's intelligence in the process. You'd expect more from director Diane Keaton, whose Unstrung Heroes had so much freewheeling warmth. There are a few lovely touches here - particularly a flashback near the end showing the girls' parents slow-dancing in a slo-mo haze that gets at the subtle idea that the bond between parents, even those who end up estranged from one another, is often something that their children can't, and aren't meant to, understand.
But the most memorable images from Hanging Up are Meg Ryan flashing that curlicue smile, absent-mindedly smashing up her vehicle and padding around her picture-perfect California home in puffy footgear that's probably supposed to make her look adorably clownish. Walter Matthau, with his leering, gummy smile, makes for one very annoying old man - a candidate for plug-pulling if ever there was one. Lisa Kudrow, predictably, plays the dizzy sister, but her sometimes appealing spaciness reads like nothing so much as shtick here. Keaton has the most amusing bits - she's got the aura of New York women's magazine editors down cold, right down to her smug, ruthless, we're-all-just-girls-here crocodile smile.
But no actress can redeem a movie with as many shameless greeting-card moments as Hanging Up. "I am just the tiniest bit jealous of your heart," Keaton tells Ryan in one of the movie's pivotal scenes, and the sisters' smiles crinkle more loudly than cellophane. There are other lessons to be learned from watching Hanging Up: a wise and wonderful mother figure unexpectedly enters Ryan's life and, after listening to her woes, informs her, "Sometimes it's necessary to disconnect." That's the obvious message of Hanging Up. It's little wonder, then, that it has all the profundity of a dial tone.
Credits
- Director
- Diane Keaton
- Producers
- Laurence Mark
- Nora Ephron
- Screenplay
- Delia Ephron
- Nora Ephron
- Based on the book by
- Delia Ephron
- Director of Photography
- Howard Atherton
- Editor
- Julie Monroe
- Production Designer
- Waldemar Kalinowski
- Music
- David Hirschfelder
- ©Global Entertainment Productions GmbH & Co. Movie KG
- Production Companies
- Columbia Pictures presents a Nora Ephron and Laurence Mark production
- Executive Producers
- Delia Ephron
- Bill Robinson
- Co-producer
- Diana Pokorny
- Executive for Blue Relief
- Amanda McHugh
- Executive for Laurence Mark Productions
- Petra Alexandria
- Production Supervisor
- Michelle Morrissey
- Production Co-ordinator
- Brigette Lester
- Unit Production Manager
- Diana Pokorny
- Location Manager
- Bob Craft
- Assistant Directors
- K.C. Colwell
- Darin Rivetti
- Paula Harris
- Script Supervisor
- Marion Tumen
- Casting
- Lisa Beach
- Associate:
- Sarah Katzman
- Camera Operator
- Doug O'Neons
- Steadicam Operator
- Greg Lundsgaard
- Visual Effects
- Digiscope, Inc
- Special Effects Supervisor
- J.D. Streett IV
- Special Effects
- Tom Seymour
- Art Director
- Troy Sizemore
- Set Designer
- Mick Cukurs
- Set Decorator
- Florence Fellman
- Costume Designer
- Bobbie Read
- Costume Supervisor
- Elinor Bardach
- Make-up Supervisor
- Steve Artmont
- Hair Supervisor
- Jan Alexander
- Main Titles Design
- Garson Yu
- Opticals/End Titles
- Cinema Research Corporation
- Orchestrations
- Thomas Pasatieri
- Music Editor
- Richard Whitfield
- Music Scoring Mixer
- Dennis Sands
- Music Consultant
- Bonnie Greenberg
- Soundtrack
- "Once Upon a Time" by Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, performed by Jay McShann; "Junk", "Singalong Junk" by/performed by Paul McCartney; "Have Yourself a Merry Little
- Christmas" by Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin, performed by Judy Garland; "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow" by Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn, performed by Dean Martin; "Movin' On Up" by Jeff Barry, Ja'net Dubois, performed by Ja'net Dubois; "Train in Vain" by Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, performed by Annie Lennox; "Happy Birthday to You" by Mildred J. Hill, Patty S. Hill; "Georgia on My Mind" by Hoagy Carmichael, Stuart Gorrell, performed by Steve Tyrell
- Production Mixer
- Charles M. Wilborn
- Re-recording Sound Mixers
- Kevin O'Connell
- Greg P. Russell
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Michael Wilhoit
- Dialogue Editors
- Frederick H. Stahly
- Kimaree Long
- Lauren Stephens
- Sound Effects Editors
- Philip Hess
- Stu Bernstein
- Scott Wolf
- Greg Hedgepath
- ADR
- Artists:
- Gary Hecker
- Michael Broomberg
- Supervising Editor:
- Susan Dudeck
- Editors:
- Andrea Horta
- Joe Dorn
- Foley
- Mixer:
- Richard Duarte
- Editors:
- Gary Mundheim
- Mark Gordon
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jack Gill
- Cast
- Meg Ryan
- Eve Marks
- Diane Keaton
- Georgia
- Lisa Kudrow
- Maddy
- Walter Matthau
- Lou Mozell
- Adam Arkin
- Joe
- Cloris Leachman
- Pat Mozell
- Jesse James
- Jesse Marks
- Edie McClurg
- Esther
- Duke Moosekian
- Omar Kunundar
- Ann Bortolotti
- Ogmed Kunundar
- Maree Cheatham
- Angie
- Myndy Crist
- Doctor Kelly
- Libby Hudson
- Georgia's assistant
- Tracee Ellie Ross
- Kim
- Celia Weston
- Madge Turner
- Bob Kirsh
- Nixon Library representative
- Stephanie Ittleson
- Victoria
- Venessia Valentino
- nurse at mesh window
- R.A. Buck
- Phil Levesque
- gay men
- Paige Wolfe
- Eve, six years old
- Charles Matthau
- young Lou
- Ethan Dampf
- Jesse, four years old
- Mary Beth Pape
- mother at party
- Catherine Paolone
- doctor
- Carol Mansell
- woman who recognizes Maddy
- Katie Stratton
- Georgia, 12 years old
- Talia-Lynn Prairie
- Maddy, four years old
- Kristina Dorn
- young Pat
- Lucky Vanous
- Montana dude
- Bill Robinson
- doctor on soap
- Jaffe Cohen
- sub-editor
- Jonathan Gale
- hairdresser
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 8,509 feet
- 94 minutes 33 seconds
- Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound/SDDS
- Colour by
- DeLuxe