"...and this is my father?"      

HANGING UP (PG-13)

Reviewed February 20, 2000 - Check out the Hanging Up Website.

Studio Synopsis: Three sisters do what they do best—deal with life, love and lunacy on the telephone lines that bind—when their father is admitted to a Los Angeles Hospital. After years of wild living, intermittent affection and constant phoning, he is finally threatening to die.

In Hanging Up, an exploration of family at its best, worst and funniest, director Diane Keaton introduces us to the Mozells: patriarch Lou (Walter Matthau) and daughters Georgia (Diane Keaton), vying for a spot on the Power List as editor in chief of her self-titled women’s magazine, Eve (Meg Ryan), the daddy’s girl-turned-responsible middle sister, and Maddy (Lisa Kudrow), a semi-successful soap actress. Somewhere between ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye’ and ‘you’re breaking up—I’ll call you back,’ they cope with the joy, tears and conflicting emotions that plague all families, and most importantly, find a way to laugh despite their hang-ups.

Fuzzydog Review: Equal billing aside, make no mistake about it: Hanging Up is Meg Ryan's movie from beginning to end.  A middle child struggling to keep "the family" together, Meg Ryan's character Eve becomes the center of the Mozells' world, interacting and functioning as they do through (what else?) the phone.  This is bittersweet comedy and heartfelt melodrama, with a physically and mentally deteriorating father (played nicely by Walter Matthau) eventually bringing the three sisters together. 

Does Hanging Up work?  Well, yes and no.  There's a kind of likeable honesty in this story and its characters, and Meg Ryan really goes to town playing the sometimes frazzled but ever kind-hearted Eve.  Unfortunately, this is also a story that seems to walk in circles...covering the same ground again and again, yet never really getting to any discernible point.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing of course [fuzzydog pausing to ask if life has a discernible point], but in the case of Hanging Up, the lack of "a point" is not a great thing either.  Very simply, this is a film that meanders just a bit too much for its own good...likeable but not particularly inspiring or memorable.  Definite home video material in my book...

Responses from cyberspace--thanks for writing!

David Rogers gives this movie  stars:  I heard somewhere that this was supossed to be a comedy, well it isn't Meg Ryan didn't "Steal my heart", she "Annoyed me to death"! The only thing saving this movie from a 1 star rating is a great performance by Walter Mathau (may he rest in peace)." (10/13/00)