Movie Review: Hanging Up (2000)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Diane Keaton  

Starring: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Walter Matthau, Cloris Leachman  

Running Time: 94 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, event planner Eve (Meg Ryan) is a working mom and leads a harried life. Her schedule gets more complicated when her father Lou (Walter Matthau), a retired Hollywood screenwriter who once met John Wayne, is hospitalized with worsening dementia. Eve's two sisters do little to share the care burden: driven businesswoman Georgia (Diane Keaton) owns and publishes a women's magazine, while self-absorbed Maddy (Lisa Kudrow) is a daytime soap actress. Lou's rapid deterioration interferes with a large event Eve is planning. 

What Works Well: The next-to-impossible pressures of juggling home, career, and aging parents are effectively represented through Eve's character. Her choppy relationships and strained bonds with her sisters add further texture, as the burden of care falls on the sibling most willing to say "yes" to every request. In his final screen role, Walter Matthau captures the agony of dementia, a fading life reduced to endless repetition and imposing an unmanageable burden on the one family member most willing to help. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The attempt to balance drama and comedy does not quite work. Humour is wedged in mostly through Eve's frazzled mannerisms, while the material cries out for an overall more sombre tone. Too many scenes feature phone calls and other phone calls interrupting phone calls, resulting in repetitive and quite tiresome "gotta go" non-conversations. The ending rushes to resolutions through over-simplification and juvenile antics.

Key Quote:

Doctor (from the hospital, on the phone to Eve): Your father is missing.

Eve: Check in the bed of every single female patient!

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