One has to applaud the insightfulness of director Curtis Hanson and his decision to use Garbage’s “Stupid Girl” to open his latest disappointment, In Her Shoes.  Since knocking the cinematic world on its collective duff with the unspeakably brilliant L.A. Confidential in 1997 – a film that earned the filmmaker three Oscar nominations and a win for his adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel – Hanson has become a director-for-hire, sputtering out over-praised mediocrity like Wonder Boys and 8 Mile, both of which were each penned by someone else and failed to show the same brilliant execution as Confidential.  Now, setting his sights on the book that put the “ick” in Chick-Lit, Hanson allows ham-fisted writer Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) to adapt Jennifer Weiner’s cloying book of the same name.  “Stupid Girls,” indeed, although I’m not sure if I’m certain Hanson is referring to his story’s source or his film’s target audience, since there’s absolutely no reason a person with outdoor plumbing would want to see Shoes.  You know, unless they’re trying to “close the deal,” or just got caught with someone else’s digits in the back pocket of their jeans.

Shoes is all about sisters, and you know sisters gots to stick together.  Props given for not playing “We Are Family” over the inevitable last-reel reuniting of the picture’s protagonists: Irresponsible and occasionally illiterate floozy Maggie (Cameron Diaz), and her Hollywood-frumpy sibling Rose (Toni Collette), a lonely attorney who buys shoes to fill the various voids in her empty life.  One is hot, and the other isn’t.  One knows how to have fun, and the other hasn’t had fun in years.  One’s can’t keep a menial retail job to save her life, and the other is reliable almost to a fault.  One is a moron who uses her sexuality to get everything she wants, and the other works hard to get everything she has obtained because there isn’t a sexy bone in her body.  One is…oh, frick – you get the picture.  They’re opposites – we get it, already.

Since neither of these women are remotely likeable, the story makes them orphans.  Their crazy mother (played in photos by Ivana Milicevic) died when they were little, and good old dad (Ken “White Shadow” Howard) might as well be invisible after shacking up with a Super-Jew (Candice Azzara) who doesn’t cotton to the idea of having a pair of shiksas for step-daughters.  To make matters worse, while Maggie is looting her father’s house, she stumbles on a cache of unopened birthday cards from the fraternal grandmother everyone thought had died decades ago.  Ditching gray Philadelphia for a sunny retirement community in Florida, Maggie rekindles her relationship with estranged Grandma Ella (Shirley MacLaine), and learns a little something about being a responsible adult, too.  Mostly, though, it’s just an excuse to pack the second half of Shoes with a lot of stereotypical Golden Girls-type humor about sassy octogenarians and their wise-cracking one-liners.  And, hell, if I wanted that, I’d stay home and watch The View.

Hanson does help elevate Shoes above the usual dreck of this woeful genre, but it’s still incredibly disappointing to see him slumming it with movies about Rocky-esque rappers and sisters who can’t get along.  So help me god, I’d rather see L.A. Confidential II…animated.  Aside from MacLaine’s performance, which is the only grounding presence in the entire production, the acting is largely of the “called in” variety.  But who could blame Diaz and Collette, since they’ve played these exact roles so many times in the past.  And who made the brilliant decision to have this run-of-the-mill chick-flick play for over two-hours?  Dude, I hope that phone number she found in your back pocket was worth it, because once you factor in the trailers, commercials, and drive-time, your whole day is shot.

2:10 –

for thematic material, language and some sexual content