Here’s a pretty good (i.e.,

Here’s a pretty good (i.e., well-written, moderately diverting ) piece about Friends with Money director Nicole Holofcener by critic Carina Chocano. I’ve seen the film, which portrays four Westside L.A. women in terms of their jobs, income and relationships with their men (i.e., mostly husbands), and I certainly recognize some of the characters, character traits and situations. Holofcener is a smart writer, an honest artist and a straight dealer…but there are two things in this film that no one, anywhere, is going to buy. One is Jennifer Aniston playing a poor house cleaner who winds up with a slovenly, poorly-dressed overweight rich guy who tries to chisel her down on her house-cleaning fee…a guy who’s about 75 to 100 pounds heavier than she is, and about 15 inches taller. The other is a scene in which Catherine Keener, playing an unhappily married screenwriter, visits a next-door neighbor who is angry at Keener and husband Jason Isaacs for starting construction on a second-story addition to their home which blocks the neighbor’s view of the city. Earlier in the film Keener and Isaacs agree they’re willing to accept neighbor hostility over this matter, but when Keener visits the neighbor and sees for herself how the second-story addition is a gross visual eyesore from this perspective, she runs out and tries to stop the building and tells all the workers to go home. Uh-huh…an expensive undertaking she’s had months to consider and involves the borrowing of a serious amount of money (probably from a bank) to pay for, and she’s going to shut it down over a matter of neighborly relations. We’re also asked to believe the neighbor wouldn’t have invited Keener over to her home in the early stages (i.e., while the framework was being put up) to make her case. You want to like this film, and you want to go with it…but these obstacles are not the doing of the viewer.

• Tweet