Review of Please Give (2010) by Larry Q — 13 Jun 2010

If the film is finally no great departure for its director - Holofcener's regular lead Keener remains a pleasure to watch, wracked with her own good intentions - it nevertheless confirms her as a real boon for actors.

Hall may be the most appealing and intelligent discovery the American cinema has made this decade; the sparky Steele is at least the equal of Raven Goodwin in "Lovely & Amazing"; and Holofcener even exercises such generally untaxed performers as Peet (tapping into the flinty notes that - as per "Changing Lanes" - are evidently this actress's strongest suit) and Platt (hilariously clueless as an idiot who somehow remains lovable even as he fails to notice what a fool he's being).

.. It remains something of an anomaly that Holofcener should have directed episodes of "Sex and the City" - albeit when that series was at its televisual peak - or perhaps a damning indictment of the direction the series' spin-off movies went in.

Holofcener isn't one to make a spectacle or girly fuss over such things, but "Please Give" could legitimately count as the thinking woman's - heck, the thinking *person*'s - alternative: far savvier on the topics of womanhood, property and clothes-buying, it's a cinema that goes more than skin deep.