Review: Friends with Money

Rated R | 88 mins

IMDB Info

Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money is about as slice-of-life as a movie can get when it features Jennifer Anniston as a depressed, pot-smoking schoolteacher who chooses to quit her job and become a maid. Actually, to her credit, Anniston is rather believable here and delivers a solid performance. Her co-stars—Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, and Joan Cusack—are equally as good, but they also never have to struggle with fitting their roles’ prototype of wealthy suburban moms. Friends with Money is a portrait of all four of their characters’ troubles in life, bridged by, as the title observes, the friendship between them. The movie doesn’t really go anywhere—one could argue that that the developing relationship between Anniston’s Olivia and Bob Stephenson’s Marty is the most plot-like device throughout the entire duration—but it doesn’t need to. Only these characters can make the realizations that they need to in order to improve their outlooks on life; by the end of Friends with Money, some do and others don’t. The film plods along to the refreshing tune of everyday life and, for this, I greatly admired it.