Friends with Money

Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener and Joan Cusack

Herald rating: * *

New York writer-director Holofcener has interspersed gigs as a director on big TV shows like Six Feet Under and Sex In the City with a couple of small and sassy feature comedies (Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing) in which women angst about friends, families and relationships.

Small and perfectly formed, they both work much better than this, a ponderous and finally rather empty ensemble piece which lets four classy actors loose on a promising story premise. Yes, four. There's a good actor in Aniston (see Along Came Polly and The Good Girl) but there's not much evidence of it here.

She mostly pouts and wilts while everyone else worries about her.

The premise is that the other three women are all well-off and variously unhappily married Angelenos and Aniston's Olivia works cleaning houses.

How they became friends in the first place is glossed over but the way they interact sustains a string of vignettes in which character is teased out and Holofcener hints at the bracing idea that the rich three need Olivia to make them feel better about their sterile, privileged lives.

The problem is that none of the women is particularly likeable and Olivia is ... just nothing in particular. She's like a character black hole into which our sympathy disappears without trace.

McDormand's Jane, a permanently angry designer who picks fights over car-parking spaces and lugubriously intones "it's like we're all just waiting to die" is more interesting. We don't see enough of her.

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Running time: 88 mins Rating: M (frequent coarse language, moderate sexual references, sex scene, drug references)
Screening: Rialto, SkyCity, Berkeley, Hoyts
Verdict: Ponderous ensemble piece, with a promising story premise and four top actors, which goes nowhere.