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| Lovely
and Amazing
Directed By: Nicole
Holofcener Plot
Summary - Review 1 - Review
2 - CURRENT REVIEWS
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| The Marks family is a tightly-knit quartet of women. Jane is the affluent matriarch whose 3 daughters seem to have nothing in common except for a peculiar sort of idealism. Setting the tone of vanity and insecurity, Jane is undergoing cosmetic surgery to alter her figure, but serious complications put her health in real danger. Former homecoming queen Michelle, the eldest daughter, has one daughter of her own and an alienated, unsupportive husband. Elizabeth, the middle sister, has an acting career that is beginning to take off, but is timid and insecure, and habitually relieves her trepidation by taking in stray dogs. Only the youngest sister, Annie, an adopted African American 8-year-old, stands a chance of avoiding the family legacy of anxious self-absorption. If only her intelligence and curiosity will see her through what promises to be a confusing adolescence. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way. Check out Reviews, Commentary, and More at Zertinet.com |
LINKS
TO REVIEWS |
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Lovely
and Amazing is simply put lovely and amazing. Ah, isn’t that
wonderful, now if only some studio will put Zertinet on their movie
poster. But, however clichéd that statement may be, it’s
partially true. You see I almost turned off Lovely and Amazing after
the first few minutes. It reminded me of the trite, fake, forced recent
women empowerments like Real Women Have Curves and My Big Fat Greek
Wedding. The dialogue was cheap, the characters shallow and the directing
utterly boring. Then I started to realize that the director was ultimately aware of this fact. The movie began to change. It proceeded to poke fun at and criticize the beginning part of the movie. As these characters started actually living their lives the movie changed. Suddenly near the utter craptacularness of the first half was very clear. In a stunning scene in a fast food restaurant, it’s suddenly clear how much more meaning is contained in “Are you going to finish that” followed by “Take all you want” than a 2 minute tyraid on the injustices of the world. Lovely and Amazing is the story of three sisters and their mother. Jane is a 50 year old mother of two and adopted mother of one. She’s decided that she doesn’t like how she looks and coughs up the $10,000 to get liposuction. Elizabeth is going on 30 and struggling to be an actress. Her husband shows a complete lack of support or attraction towards her. Michelle is also going on 30 however her husband shows an almost complete blind support for her work. They have one child together and in her spare time she makes little homemade trinkets that she tries to sell to area art shops for rich people to buy. She makes small chairs made of sticks, homemade wallpaper and various other things that people never really buy. The youngest of the sisters, Annie, is Jane’s 7 year old adopted black child. Annie is dealing with being fat. Like a good deal of today’s youngsters she’s just a bit overweight and having a few issues with her self image. Her 20 year old black ‘big sister’ attempts to teach her to swim. Most of the story takes place as Jane’s surgery takes a turn for the worse and she gets a fairly bad infection and starts to slip in and out of consciousness. As a result the other sisters have to temporarily take care of Annie. This seems to be a catalyst for change in each of their lives. The sheer scare of their mothers death and somehow their lovers reactions to this news seems to awaken something inside them. Elizabeth decides to start having sex with a very attractive and famous actor whom she was scheduled to co star with. Michelle gets a job at a one hour photo and starts to get nasty with the 17 year son of the owner who hires her. Annie deals with it the way most kids do, she acts out. She starts to pretend she’s drowning and starts to wear makeup and gets her hair straightened. There are some truly chilling scenes in the second half of the movie. Jane starts to hit on her plastic surgeon who once seems to accept her advances and Elizabeth has one of the oddest sexual scenes when she asks the guy she just slept with to objectively critique her body. Annie’s problems start to get exceptionally interesting when people start to immediately assume that her problems stem from race. People assume, oh there’s a black girl who has self image problems, it must be because she is black. The performances by these actresses are all amazing. Especially by Catherine Keener (Michelle) of Being John Malcovik and Adaptation fame. As a credit to themselves they somehow find an ability to capture the shallowness in the beginning of the movie that I was completely convinced it really was a crappy movie. Lovely and Amazing is a story about real people. These people are insecure about their lives. They aren’t convinced that there’s some inner beauty about them. They see themselves as I suspect most people do, mostly for the flaws. However, these are still very strong women…although perhaps in a different way. They accept these flaws somewhere along the way. They make choices in their lives. These choices don’t always turn out the best either. At the end of the movie there isn’t a ‘moment’. We don’t bask in the reflective glory of these women. They make choices that sometimes aren’t all good. When Michelle cheats on her husband with a 17 year old kid she realizes that her child mom has never not come home at night. If she wants to do this she has to make real sacrifices. There’s something unique about these women. Well, at least unique in the movie business. These women are probably closer to real people than most anything within a 60 mile radius of LA or New York. There’s something so refreshing in seeing a movie that doesn’t just reject the cliché’s, but begins with them and contrasts them with real emotion. In the end, it’s all about that conversation at McDonalds where nothing is said. 
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