Hangups Abound In Witty Comedy

February 18, 2000|By Michael Wilmington, Tribune Movie Critic.

Happy families, according to Tolstoy, are all alike; unhappy families each sad in their own way. So, what can we say about the Mozells, the fictitious happy-sad clan created by writers-sisters Delia and Nora Ephron in their brainy, pretty comedy "Hanging Up?"

It's a family tale uniting Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton and Lisa Kudrow as its three sisters.The Mozells are happy and sad all over the map: a typically dysfunctional, but charming, affluent L.A. group united here more by cell phones than personal contact. Still, they move us -- and so does their movie.

The Mozells are obviously partly modeled on Delia, Nora and their parents, screenwriter-playwrights Henry and Phoebe Ephron (plus two other Ephron sisters, who may have been combined). And the movie is sometimes sentimental, more often sparkling and deft. I've blown hot and cold on Nora Ephron's films -- for every "When Harry Met Sally" there's a "Mixed Nuts" --and her last movie, the calculated, cutesy "You've Got Mail," also with Ryan, left me feeling fairly icy.

But "Hanging Up" shows Ephron's best side, the one where she forgets attitude and exposes her experiences and feelings. Adapted from Delia's 1995 novel, this movie is witty, spry, even touching: a humorous memoir about a highly verbal, jokey family in the midst of anguish. And even though we've seen the Mozells type before, I wound up beguiled and amused, and mostly delighted to have made their acquaintance.

Especially Walter Matthau as the slightly loony, charmingly irascible, telephone-happy patriarch Lou Mozell. This is a perfect role for Matthau -- though his acting in the '90s has been so consistently excellent, he makes every role seem perfect for him, including kitschy ones like "Grumpy Old Men." Lou, a salty, profane, old L.A. writer, with a mind alternately scattered and laser-sharp, has a habit of constantly phoning his three daughters, especially middle sister Eve (Ryan), and the calls continue even as he slides into illness and dementia. It's a risky role, but Matthau endows it with sympathy, while never slighting Lou's most obnoxious flaws and foibles: the way he drunkenly ruins his grandson's birthday parties, plagues Eve's life or fills this movie with off-color reminiscences about the private parts of John Wayne.

Lou may be based in part on Henry Ephron, to whom the novel was dedicated and who was a far more successful writer ("Take Her, She's Mine," "Desk Set") than his counterpart Lou. But one doubts Henry Ephron ever got as many laughs in one month as Matthau gets in this movie. Or tears either.

Does it seem odd that a male supporting actor so dominates a movie about three sisters? Ryan, Keaton and Kudrow may be the stars, but what we're watching is the spectacle of Lou's impending death -- mixed with memories of his earlier life, revealed in Eve's flashbacks. We sense that mix of misery and joy in the beginning, when a morose Lou is checked into UCLA Hospital by Eve. It becomes clear that he may never leave.

Meanwhile, his badgering phone calls release a flood of memories in his daughters: in Eve, his long-suffering, always reliable favorite; in the oldest, Georgia (Keaton), a magazine superstar editor in the Tina Brown class; and the youngest, Maddy (Kudrow), a petulant, slightly ditzy soap opera star. Eve, a harried event planner, is the movie's center of consciousness. Through her flashbacks, we get the story of her father, her sisters, and mother, Pat (played by Cloris Leachman as the ultimate remote parent), plus her father's impossible moods, his romps, his lapses and cantankerous tantrums, his devil-may-care razzmatazz.

The sisters are all wonderfully played -- and wonderfully guided by Keaton, who doubles as director. More than "Unstrung Heroes," this is director Keaton's best film. She gives the movie a delicious swiftness, with all three actresses getting free rein for their specialties: Ryan's eternal girlishness, Keaton's dithery charisma, Kudrow's wacky narcissism.

The relationship between them is also carefully planted and plotted. Eve is the facilitator, the responsible one. Georgia is the absent superstar who comes swooping in at rare intervals. Maddy is the petulant underachiever, jealous of Georgia and exploitive of Eve.

It's hard to imagine a family in which Matthau and Leachman mixed their genes to create these three, yet the actresses so obviously enjoy each other, we accept their unlikely bond. The sparks keep flying.