Hanging Up

Bomb Rating: 

Somehow, director Keaton and effete hacks Delia and Nora Ephron conceived this to be a film about familial love. Like most Ephron films, however, it's really a Trojan horse of misogyny.

I generally take notes with a mechanical pencil that has a very sharp tip. Whenever somebody's cell phone starts ringing in the middle of whatever movie I happen to be watching, my reaction is to stand up and, much like Wesley Snipes in "Blade," whip that pencil across the theater like a Chinese throwing star at whomever has offended me. So far, I've rendered three yuppies sightless in one eye, startled four other people into dropping their phones onto the hard concrete floor, and impaled one grandmother in the head -- a fact she didn't notice until after the movie was over.

You can only imagine what a difficult time I had staying seated during "Hanging Up," since the movie seems to be about ringing cell phones and precious little else. If this isn't the worst idea for a movie premise ever, it places a close second to demolishing a baseball-playing chimp's career by teaming him with Matt LeBlanc. This is a movie about talking on the phone -- about taking phone calls, making phone calls, and the kind of personal havoc that is wreaked by conducting one's personal relationships on the phone.

I loathed every single character in this movie. Eve (Meg Ryan) lives in Los Angeles, drives a Range Rover, and prances around answering calls on her cell phone all day. She takes care of her father (Walter Matthau), a pathetic, mean old bastard who treats her like dirt. Her sisters, Maddy (Lisa Kudrow) and Georgia (Diane Keaton), also treat her like dirt and don't help her one bit. Somehow, director Keaton and effete hacks Delia and Nora Ephron conceived this to be a film about familial love. Like most Ephron films, however, it's really a Trojan horse of misogyny, an ostensibly woman-centered film that, by offering up such a consistent parade of pathetic female characters, actually sets women's rights back about 20 years.

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