Please Give is one of those “slice-of-life” movies. Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt play a couple who own a lucrative used furniture business in New York City. They have a cranky teenage daughter (Sarah Steele). In the apartment next door, a 90-year-old woman (Ann Morgan Guilbert) has sold Keener and Platt her apartment. They can take possession when she dies. The senior citizen is cared for by her granddaughters, Amanda Peet and Rebbecca Hall, who have their own complicated relationship. Keener deals with a compulsion to give money away to poor people and to volunteer. This movie doesn’t quite jell, but the fine performances make it worth watching. GRADE: B
It’s funny: Jackie was just talking about this as one of the few ‘small’ movies playing in this mostly hideous summer of movies. We might give it a try.
I remember Guilbert as the next door neighbor on THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW nearly 50 years ago!
*heads for the geezer bus*
Diane is a fan of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, too, Jeff. She picked off Guibert right away. PLEASE GIVE is well worth watching.
The cast is impressive. My best friend/ex-apartment & housemate Alice went to med school with Peet’s sister (in our apartment years).
This is the first movie I’ve seen Amanda Peet in where she actually plays a “not nice” person, Todd. And she’s pretty convincing, too.