Review of In Her Shoes (2005) by Kieran L — 25 Aug 2015

I'm rather disappointed in the professional reviewers who panned the movie for being "schmaltzy" (the audience reviewers, not so much). If you don't like movies about relationships that are meant to be cathartic and bring out feelings of loneliness, grief, and an intense desire to catch up with your siblings... great. You're probably in the majority, actually. But professional reviewers are supposed to look past that, and answer the question: is this movie good at evoking the thoughts/feelings that it was trying to evoke? And the answer to that question, in this case, is a resounding, "Yes!".

It could have gone for "Love Story"-level schmaltz. But instead, it told a complex story with relateable characters and a wide variety of relationship things going on (the relationship between the sisters, between the older sister and her friend, between each sister and their grandmother, between each sister and their father, between the grandmother and her friends, between the younger sister and the blind professor, etc.) In the story, they all grew, as expected, but in an organic way. Even the camera work and the sets were deliberately thought out to evoke the necessary emotions. The loneliness and insecurities of the characters bled through the screen. I cried. A lot.

Which was the movie's goal, and it accomplished it very well, through good writing, well-written characters, and good direction.

A movie that evokes the thoughts and feelings that it wants to evoke, and does it well and deliberately, is a good movie, pretty much by definition. Now, whether what that movie is trying to accomplish is something you want to experience, is up to you... but whether that's the case or not, doesn't negate it being a good movie.