Girlfriends will tell you every detail of their love life, their marital problems and which ensemble they wore last night, but bring up the subject of money, and even the closest of friends are guarded, or have opinions on how you should be spending yours. Frances McDormand is an angry clothes designer, fed up, tired and married to a husband who could be gay, so she screams at people who cut in front of her at Old Navy. Why is she there in the first place? Catherine Keener plays a screenwriter whose troubled marriage is exaggerated by a house renovation, while Joan Cusack is the happily married one who has a huge inheritance. Her biggest concern is that her husband spends too much on baby shoes from Paris for their child. What the three have in common is their love and concern for their fourth friend, Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) who is a school teacher turned cleaning lady. And while she may be the poorest, she seems to be the happiest. While its amusing and reflective of any forty-something woman’s own little issues, in some shape or form, it feels like a packaged formula of “Bridget Jones” meets “Sex and the City’s” Carrie Bradshaw, but with a sense of “Crash” since their lives keep intersecting, yet I’m never sure why. In Los Angeles rich friends wouldn’t socialize with a maid. Nevertheless, I laughed, I related and I felt good after I left the theatre, even if it felt more like a sitcom idea than a complete movie. TWO CROWNS
