When we first meet the Feller sisters of "In Her Shoes," Rose is embarrassed to be wearing boring cotton underpants during
one of her very rare intimate encounters with a man, while Maggie is having drunken sex with a stranger in a bathroom stall at her 10-year high school reunion. This is not a scene of American family life that Norman Rockwell would have painted, but Curtis Hanson -- director of "Wonder Boys," "8 Mile" and now this -- paints it remarkably well. Working from a script by Susannah Grant ( "Erin Brockovich" ), adapted from Jennifer Weiner's novel, Hanson has made a quiet movie, funny but not wacky or garish, and with serious feelings beneath it. The first act puts the two sisters together. Rose (Toni Collette) is a depressed lawyer with barely a hint of a social life, recently advanced upon by a fellow attorney (Richard Burgi), but we all know how inter-office things usually go. Maggie (Cameron Diaz) is a party girl, the black sheep of the family, unable (or unwilling) to hold a job, big on alcohol and petty theft and a serious fan of casual sex. Kicked out of her father's house by her stepmom (Candice Azzara), Maggie crashes at Rose's place, an Odd Couple situation fraught with the utmost peril.
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