Friends with Money\ is a sweeter, funnier version of Rodrigo Garcia's 2000 modern women's tale ""Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her."" The writing isn't as good and the characters aren't as unique, but if there is anything that ""Friends with Money"" has over ""Things You Can Tell,"" it's Jennifer Aniston.
With the role of Rachel Green behind her, along with her a-hole-ex Brad Pitt and a little fiasco entitled ""Derailed,"" Jennifer is back at the plate and in full swing. She has the face, the hair and that look of faint confusion that a great majority of this world adores. She established herself with ""Friends"" and proved herself with ""The Good Girl"" (2002), and now just about everybody wants to join Team Aniston in her race for cinematic glory.
""Friends with Money"" doesn't impress, but it works. Aniston plays Olivia, a pothead ex-teacher who quit her job because the rich kids at school started offering her quarters to buy food. She starts working as a maid, stocking her drawers with free samples of designer cosmetics from department stores and, on occasion, rifling through the drawers and cupboards of employers.
Her three best friends, Franny (Joan Cusack), Jane (Frances McDormand) and Christine (Catherine Keener) are all married with tons of money, beautiful houses and jobs as screenwriters, full-time moms or expensive clothing designers. Jane is having a mid-life crisis and everybody (including strange men) think her husband is gay. Christine is clumsy and kind, but her marriage is falling apart, and her husband is mean and close-minded. Franny has so much money she doesn't know what to do with it; her husband buys their 6-year-old daughter $80 shoes, and they have two million dollars floating around just waiting to be donated to any random charity.
Is it believable that these women with all of their money and success would still be friends with Olivia, the burn-out maid who used to be a school teacher? No. Is it nice and possible to think that they would be? Yes. ""Friends with Money"" may be idealized in this respect. However, the rest of it is just as plain and gray as life itself.
The film is slightly monotonous, and there are a lot of plot devices so unnecessary that the questions they leave unanswered are completely expendable. The ending is a kind of deus ex machina that will go in an unexpected direction for most though it makes perfect sense. The camera work is unique in its attempts to capture the life of a modern woman moving between the demands of work and home and the lengths some women need to go to in order to find a balance.
""Friends with Money"" raises questions that deal with how difficult it is to break out of depression when it can be so easy to slip in, and it also questions denial. How long can a person live believing that their life is something that it isn't? Where is that line one must draw between what they need and what they are afraid to ask for? This film may not be perfect, but it entertains, is consistently funny and ends with a refreshing breeze that many contemporary dramas either lack or reject.
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