Cast: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Mattheau, Adam Arkin, Cloris Leachman
Director: Diane Keaton
Producers: Nora Ephron, Laurence Mark
Screenplay: Delia Ephron & Nora Ephron, based on the novel by Delia Ephron
Cinematography: Howard Atherton
Music: David Hirschfelder
U.S. Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Watching Hanging Up is akin to enduring fingernails scratching a blackboard for an hour and a half. This is an irritating motion picture, filled with whiny, dislikable characters and capped off with a 10-minute melodramatic finale that nearly had me retching in the theater. Even the presence of the normally reliable Meg Ryan, whose steadying influence can often elevate even the least appealing production, can do little to rescue Hanging Up, which starts out badly and gets worse as time drags on.
Hanging Up is the latest product of the prolific Ephron sisters, whose movies are to estrogen what Jerry Bruckheimer's are to testosterone. When the Ephrons hit, they typically hit big (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail). But when they miss, as has happened here, the result is catastrophic. (Anyone care to remember Mixed Nuts?) One wonders what could have provoked anyone in Hollywood to greenlight such a painfully schmaltzy motion picture, regardless of which big names were attached. Admittedly, one expects a certain amount of emotional manipulation from a "chick flick", but loathing every character to appear on screen is not usually part of the formula.
The film is awash in heavy-handed symbolism, most of which has to do with the telephone. Thematically, Hanging Up tackles sisterhood, the relationship between parents and children, and the gradual disintegration of interpersonal contact in the age of advanced telecommunication. None of these ideas are groundbreaking, and, regurgitated as they are here, with nothing that's new or remotely interesting, they cause proceedings to sputter and drag. The perfunctory and trite manner with which the film deals with senility and death is an insult to those who are coping with those conditions in real life. They are plot devices here, used for failed comic effect or as an equally doomed emotional catalyst.
The story centers on three sisters and their elderly father (Walter Matthau, utterly wasted here), who appears to be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. The oldest, 50-something Georgia (Diane Keaton), is the egotistical publisher of a best-selling magazine named after her. The middle daughter, perky Eve (Meg Ryan), is an "average" wife and mother, who is attempting to start up a party planning business while caring for her father. The youngest, Maddie (Lisa Kudrow), is an up-and-coming actress who has landed a gig on a soap opera. (The best line of the film has Dad telling Maddie: "I got arrested once. As part of the punishment, they made me watch your show.") Mom (Cloris Leachman) hasn't been around for a long time. She walked out on her husband and children 20 years ago, and, by all accounts, hasn't looked back since. (One senses she made the right decision.) The three sisters rarely meet in person. Instead, they spend endless time on the phone with each other, often rushing through conversations and hanging up so they can make another call. Of course, as the film draws to a close and their father suffers a stroke, they all gather at the hospital, where many tears are shed.
If you're groping for the film's positive qualities, each is almost as difficult to locate as the proverbial needle in a haystack. Occasionally, Hanging Up makes a telling point about the role of women in today's business world or about the conflicting feelings of love, resentment, and responsibility that can surface when dealing with (or neglecting) family issues. But those elements, while present to one degree or another, are too often buried beneath contrived character interaction and cute one-liners.
For Diane Keaton, Hanging Up is not a directorial debut, but it is constructed with the clumsiness and gracelessness of one. Back in 1995, Keaton did an effective job behind the camera for Unstrung Heroes, a movie that tackled issues of mortality far better than this one. Hanging Up has a sloppy and disjointed feel, although that's probably as much a fault of the sappy, ill-conceived screenplay (by sisters Nora & Delia Ephron, based on Delia's novel) as it is of the direction. The recent movie this most strongly reminded me of was 1998's Stepmom. Both pictures have a lot in common: they waste the talent of capable actresses, are hamstrung by badly written scripts, try to make everyone cry at the end, and are so tedious that they're almost physically painful to sit through. With Hanging Up, the best approach is not to answer the call in the first place.
© 2000 James Berardinelli