Friends With Money vs Set It Off

Friends With Money is likely to be a movie you’ll hear people complaining isn’t about anything. Sometimes movies give you humans, sometimes they give you situations. Friends With Money gives you humans. There is not a bomb on the bus; there’s not a meteor the size of Texas plummeting toward Earth. It’s mainly just walking and talking, although sometimes it’s driving and talking, and there’s often eating or maybe some shopping.

Friends With Money was written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who also directed Walking and Talking and Lovely and Amazing. All three movies have interesting female casts, witty dialogue, themes of depression, and conflicts involving class, gender or generational differences. What they don’t have is carbs. Even Joan Cusack is rocking the tendons. Joan, I’ll make you a deal: since you’re so funny and subtle in Friends With Money (and everything else, for that matter), I’ll sign up for your cell phone if you’ll eat, say, a banana.

Jennifer Aniston is Olivia, the only friend with no money. She’s a former teacher who quit her job at a rich school after reaching her limit of humiliations at the hands of the snobby students. Now, she’s a house-cleaner who spends her free time smoking weed and stalking a recent fling over the phone. She also has to contend with a shallow, possibly-sleazy personal trainer she’s been dating (Scott Caan), as well as her friends, who would love to help her, but are hoping to help her in that way where they just convince her to help herself, rather than actually just giving her some help. You know, teach Jennifer Aniston to fish, or something.

Not that her friends couldn’t use some help of their own. Jane (Frances McDormand) is a clothing designer suffering from depression (she’s stopped washing her hair, she’s rude to everyone, she’s always angry). Jane’s friends thinks her husband is gay, although their marriage seems happy enough, and he appears attracted to Jane, even though her hair is so dirty he has to get up and wash his hand after touching it. Jane is what you might call forthright, meaning she yells at drivers who take her parking spots, confronts line-jumpers at Old Navy, and lets the mothers of her son’s friends know their failings as parents. She rocks, basically, although I think I’d rather live vicariously through her rather than actually know her. Forthright people often rock only when you don’t have to deal with them one-on-one.

Christine is another friend, probably with more money than Jane. She’s a screenwriter with her husband; at the beginning of the film they argue over dialogue. Soon, they’ll be arguing over everything. Christine is played by Catherine Keener, and she does her usual Catherine Keener thing, being smart and funny and sad.

The friend with the most money is Franny (Joan Cusack). Franny doesn’t work, is happily married, and is possibly the most level-headed of the group. Her biggest problem is trying to figure out which charity to donate millions of dollars to (and when she decides, and involves her friends, no one can ever remember who they’re helping.)

Friends With Money is smart, and funny, and actually might have something to say about friends and money, although to assign it heavy themes is probably not fair. Mainly, it’s just talking, and I think it’s pretty great. The four principle actresses are in rare form (it’s one thing to cast actors as friends, it’s quite another to cast actors who look and sound as if they could actually be friends), which is good, since the friends of Friends With Money are often talking shit behind each other’s backs. Only real friends can get away with that. It’s also touching, especially in the moments following a charity dinner, as the friends drive their separate ways. Olivia caused the biggest stir that night, bringing Marty, one of her slacker house-cleaning clients. It’s an odd, sweet date, and in a way you’ll understand when you see the movie, just what everyone deserves. Olivia knows that friends with money are great, but they’ve got to be your friends first.

Okay, so you listened to yuppies complain for two hours, and now you want a situation to sink your teeth into. I think a pretty fun and funny double feature would be Friends With Money followed by Set it Off. Hey, if any movie is about friends and money, it’s this one, even though this is definitely a case of situation over humanity. Now, I know that Set it Off seems like one of those movies where the end of the pitch is “with women!”, and in a sense it is. Set it Off takes your typical bank robber movie and does three things: the first is that, yes, it replaces the usual squad of male thieves with females; secondly, it makes them truly desperate for the money, and not just out for the thrill of the heist; and third, and perhaps most importantly, it’s got a bad-ass gangsta lesbian behind the wheel. Nothing wrong with that.

The plot of Set It Off is simple enough: four female friends are down on their luck. One of them is in danger of losing her baby, and none have job prospects that are going to get them very far. But one of the ladies knows a bit about the bank she was just fired from, and another is ballsy enough to do what’s necessary to turn it over, and then maybe another, and another.

When you’re talking rappers turned actors, few are ever going to be as fundamentally legit as Queen Latifah, because she has Set It Off on her resume. In the middle of this by-the-numbers cops and robbers movie, which also carries a bit of the stink of exploitation for both women and African Americans, you get Queen Latifah as Cleo. She’s like something out of Tarantino. Shit, she’s like something out of Peckinpah. If you’ve only seen her comedies, you probably can’t imagine that not only am I recommending Set It Off, but that I’m recommending it for the star of Bringing Down the House and Last Holiday. Cleo is a gun-toting, 40-guzzling, girl-crazy thug. She’s everything every rapper has ever lied about being (and she’s got the guns, cars and chicks to prove it), and more than enough to make up for the dead weight on her team keeping her from rolling some serious bank.

Set it Off was directed by F. Gary Gray. He keeps things moving, and stages one car chase in particular that is one of the few I’ve seen that maintains the urgency and panic you’d feel if you were in an actual car chase. He keeps his actors on task, mainly, although some of them are maybe out of their element and compensate by flaring nostrils and tilting heads and clenching their jaws in the sort of faux bad-ass expressions kids try in the mirror. You’ll know that when you see it, and feel free to fast-forward. When you see Cleo, though, stop. She’s a great celluloid creation, one you won’t forget. Too bad Olivia didn’t have a friend with money like Cleo. That personal trainer woulda cleaned his act up quick.

Friends With Money: A-
Set It Off: B-