CHICAGO - MOVIE REVIEWS: FRIENDS WITH MONEY

Friends With Money has pulled in a lot of it in its first two weeks of limited release. It has also drawn a lot of mixed reactions from critics. Steven Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer has praised it as "sharply observed and deftly acted" by Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Frances McDormand and Catherine Keener. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls it "acutely funny." And Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe describes it as a "finely etched, intelligently acted social comedy." But Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times awards it only two stars, remarking that "it seems to be more of an idea than a story." Philip Wuntch in the Dallas Morning News regards it as "one of those exasperating movies that you admire without necessarily liking." And Chris Kaltenbach in the Baltimore Sun concludes: "There's a self-loathing at the center of Friends with Money that makes it a tad unpalatable, as well as a sameness, a dependence on cliché, that makes it seem trite. All the fine acting, all the carefully observed friendships at its center, can't overcome the feeling that something of a dead horse is being beaten here."



21/04/2006