Trade In Your Friends with Benefits for Friends with Money!

Nicole Holocefner, 2006

Attention, I shall not spoil this movie for you.

I saw Nicole Holofcener’s new film Friends with Money two weeks ago, and I’m still thinking about it. To me, this means a good solid four stars out of five, but you may not agree. After all, I figured that my boyfriend Cam would be totally on board, since it’s about people with a lot of expensive crap that we want to get one day, and since it’s also about couples who do well and couples who do not so well, and we pride ourselves on doing well. Additionally, although this film is primarily about the female characters – Jane (Frances McDormand), Olivia (Jennifer Aniston)*, Franny (Joan Cusack), and Christine (Catherine Keener) – their husbands play significant roles, so I figured he'd find it as amusing as I did. When the lights came back on, I looked at him a (TINY BIT) mistily, thinking that we would bond over how glad we are that we’re not like the harping, cold couples and instead are like the warm, supportive couples. He looked over and shrugged and said “B minus.”

Friend with money.

And for this reason, I believe that Friends with Money is the indie chick flick. It’s easy to digest, has a lot of obvious symbolism, addresses our type of commercialism, and ends on a relatively positive note. It also gives us the message we probably need, which is “Marry someone awesome, don’t freak out over little things, aging is okay, and money isn’t everything” without ramming a “You go, girl!” feeling down our throats. Don’t take your boyfriends, hipsters! This film is for YOU.

F.R.I.E.N.D with no money.

Seriously, I mean it. This film is basically for and about you specifically. Or, rather, who you’d like to become. It’s like a manual of good examples and bad examples of dealing with the inevitable onset of yupsterness** (yupsterity?).

In its marketing campaign (see above poster), the film’s producers try to, I don’t know, appeal to the Sisterhood crowd. You know what I mean, the Ya-Yas, that Traveling Pants thing, How to Make an American Quilt, you know, those feel-good movies about women who love each other (but not in that way) that we all secretly love watching. Well, Friends with Money doesn’t completely fit into that genre, but it does provide a necessary 2006 upgrade.

And the results are typical. A little sadness, a little hope, a little guilt, and a general feeling of “Ahhh, this is what’s supposed to happen and, what’s more, this is hopefully what’s supposed to happen to ME.”

Real-life friends with serious dough.

Dudes obviously don’t get that from this movie and I’m not really sure how they could, but it speaks well of Holocefner that it passed my own dude’s rigorous examination with a not-too-shabby B-.

* I know, I tried to make some sort of F.R.I.E.N.D.S with Money joke, but I just couldn’t get it to work out.
**I prefer “yupsterness” to “grups.” It’s clearer, doesn’t sound like an archaic disease, and I don’t care about Star Trek.