Miss You Already drives on soft shoulder

Director Catherine Hardwicke takes us back to Beaches

Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore make sand angels together as best friends Milly and Jess, two women who were slowly drifting apart until a life crisis forces them to reconnect

Miss You Already

3/5

Starring: Toni Collette, Drew Barrymore, Dominic Cooper, Paddy Considine, Jaqueline Bisset

Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke

Running time: 112 minutes

MPAA Rating: Parental Guidance, PG13

By Katherine Monk

Movie executives know you’re prone to seasonal sadness this time of year, so they stack the release slate with tear-jerkers, knowing we all feel better if our tears fall in tandem with the crisp leaves.

We’re not even all that fussy about what taps the tear ducts. It can be saccharine or stark tragedy, as long as it pushes the big blue emote button and we feel purged by the final frames because god forbid we march all the way to Christmas without a good cry.

Miss You Already desperately seeks to unleash the eye briny as it tells the story of two best friends who suddenly face an unexpected goodbye.

Jess (Drew Barrymore) and Milly (Toni Collette) have been best buds for decades, sharing everything from shoes and clothes to deep dark secrets. Milly was the wilder one: Had more sex, more boyfriends and did more drugs than her BFF Jess, but she also got married first and became a mom.

Forced to watch her best friend drift away over the years, Jess is still trying to get pregnant and now, more than ever, she’s feeling like a great big female failure.

Written by Morwenna Banks, a woman who’s written scripts for direct-to-DVD Barbie titles, Miss You Already is well-versed in all the issues that fill up the pages of women’s magazine such as sex in your ‘40s, infidelity, how do I make my man love me more? And breast cancer, the terrifying disease that strikes women down in their prime.

As a result, the movie has the tone of a live-action Cosmopolitan magazine, pushing the viewer to make judgments about people and behaviours, urging you to invest in the drama from an ego point of view first.

After all, chances are you’re going to identify with one character over another. Either you’ll see a bit of yourself in Milly, the outgoing bad girl who became a successful career woman with a handsome husband (Dominic Cooper), or you’re going to see your reflection in Jess, the “nice one” in natural fibers.

There’s no doubt the characters feel a little starchy and stiff, but thanks to Barrymore and Collette, who use their own strong personalities to soften these female stereotypes, we can’t help but crawl into the bunk bed with them and stay for the pillow fight.

Director Catherine Hardwicke helps matters with her fluid directing style that keeps us moving through the plot without grandiose stops along the way, and this is perhaps the movie’s biggest point of redemption because it understands that life moves forward.

So often, female drama gets thrown into a bubbling cauldron of melodrama that cheapens the whole double-X-chromosome experience. These types of exercises feel as sincere as the tears of a newly crowned Miss America.

Nobody likes to feel manipulated, and Hardwicke is smart enough to lay off the horn, but Miss You Already does come precariously close to the soft shoulder and nearly tumbles off the edge a few times.

What makes it worthwhile is the dynamic between Barrymore and Collette, two actors who have their own history together, and create a believable dynamic as friends.

Watching them suggest the small hurts, the big gushes of love and niggling ego competitions that frequently define female relationships makes Miss You Already more than a seasonally affected tearjerker or an updated take on Beaches.

Collette and Barrymore make Miss You Already watchable because we believe in their characters and their feelings, even when the rest of the film staggers around in circles before collapsing in the final act.

@katherinemonk

 

THE EX-PRESS, November 6, 2015

-30-

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Miss You Already: Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore play best friends Milly and Jess, two women who were slowly drifting apart until a life crisis forces them to reconnect. Despite some great performances from the whole cast, the script feels soggy for the duration. - Katherine Monk

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