Movie Review: In Her Shoes

So I called Erin up the other night to see if she wanted to go see a movie. It was the last day of my mini-vacation from work and I wanted to go out and do something relatively cheap. In other words, something that didn’t involve alcohol. So that pretty much left going to the movies. I called her in the hopes of dragging her to “Serenity” or if that didn’t work, “Flight Plan.”

“Oh, I already have plans,” she says.

“Oh, okay. I was just going to see a movie anyways.” I was letting her off the hook.

“So are we! We’re going to see ‘In Her Shoes.’… you’re welcome to join us.”

Us? Who could that mean? Found out that Amanda was down for the weekend. I tried suggesting Serenity and Flight Plan. Shot down. [shakes head] I am such a pushover.

I find out that “In Her Shoes” is a chick flick. Now I like a good chick flick on occasion. Alright, so "Bridget Jones’s Diary" (the first one) was the last one I really liked. But what the hell, I’m sure there are thousands of other guys around the country that are getting dragged to this. I can suffer to be one of them.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this was a good movie. Basically what happens is this. There are two sisters that are pretty much opposites. The younger is pretty much a tramp while the other will cling to whatever relationship that rarely comes her way. So the younger sister (played by Cameron Diaz) gets kicked out of her house and goes to live with her sister and proceeds to make that sister’s life a living hell. After a betrayal of huge proportions, the older sister kicks the younger sister out. With nowhere to go, Diaz’s character heads for Florida to track down a grandmother that she recently found out existed. The two sister’s separation allows their characters to grow. Older sister finally finds true love. Younger sister moves in with her grandmother and starts to mature. Towards the end, the two sisters get back together and reconcile.

What I liked most about this movie was the characters. All of them (with exception of the step-mother) had some redeeming qualities. That makes it more real. You get to go into the heads of the players of what turned out to be a really messed up situation.

I would hesitate to say that this movie has anything to do with being a comedy. It’s not comical but there’s just so much of it coming out of the old folks in the movie that you just can’t help but love it. Especially from that old lady neighbor.