C

Two very dissimilar sisters, separated by a terrible row, are brought back together by the grandmother they never knew in “In Her Shoes,” a curious offering indeed from Curtis Hanson (“L.A. Confidential”)–perhaps intended as a female counterpoint to his “Wonder Boys” (2000), which was a quirky story about male bonding, but nowhere near as successful as that earlier film. The scenario here, fashioned by Susannah Grant from a novel by Jennifer Weiner, involves siblings Rose (Toni Collette) and Maggie (Cameron Diaz). The former’s a driven, physically nondescript attorney in a big Philadelphia firm, while the latter’s a ditzy, freeloading troublemaker who’s thrown out of their father’s (Ken Howard) place by their controlling stepmother (Candice Azzara) after she comes back drunk and disorderly from a school reunion. Crashing with Rose because she’s got nowhere else to go, Maggie soon makes herself unwelcome, rifling through her sister’s stuff, turning the apartment into a pigsty, refusing to get a proper job, misplacing the car and even bringing home a dog. Her sister tolerates it all, however, until Maggie commits the final, unpardonable sin–bedding the firm partner that Rose has been romancing. Tossed out anew, Maggie discovers to her amazement that she has a maternal grandmother named Ella (Shirley MacLaine) living in Florida. She immediately rushes down the eastern seaboard to impose on grandma in her retirement village; there, after some uneasy weeks, the two bond, and Maggie even learns a bit of responsibility by first taking a job attending to patients at the hospital’s geriatric ward and then becoming a “buyer” for the pensioners she gradually grows friendly toward. Rose, meanwhile, leaves her job, becoming–if you can believe it–a professional dog-walker (a position that apparently pays enough to allow her to keep her large apartment); she also acquires a good, faithful fiancé in Simon Stein (Mark Feuerstein), a likable schlub from her old office who’s always admired her silently from afar. Eventually, though, Ella finds out about the sisters’ estrangement and uses her wiles to get them back together again, helping both get their lives straight in the process. Granny MacLaine even finds time to mend fences with their father, with whom she’d broken in mutual recriminations after her troubled daughter’s death in a car crash.

Despite the obviously manipulative nature of this saga of reconciliation and personal redemption, there are some fairly good things about “In Her Shoes.” The most notable is MacLaine, who uses her trademark brusqueness to good effect, in the process sweeping aside the bad memories of her summer turn in the unfortunate “Bewitched.” But Collette also manages to overcome most of the mawkish traps written into her character and make Rose a generally likable, if sometimes misguided, sort; and Feuerstein proves a pleasantly self-effacing partner for her. Unhappily, the picture is sunk by the second sister. Diaz remains a lovely sight even when somewhat bedraggled, as she often is here. But as written Maggie’s the hackneyed cliche of the razor-thin gal who always shows her depression by scarfing down loads of fattening foods–Haagen Dazs right out of the carton, spoonful after spoonful of sugar in her coffee–without ever gaining an ounce. And more important, Diaz is unable to make her an endearing figure in spite of the fact that the script tries to stack the deck in her favor. We’re supposed to forgive the girl her many misdeeds not only because she lost her mother as a child, but because she can’t read (a problem that prevents her from winning an MTV diva job because she can’t recite her lines off the audition teleprompter!) We’re also expected to be moved when a blind professor (Norman Lloyd, doing his lovably grumpy shtick), a patient who befriends her when she takes that hospital job, teaches her by having the girl read to him, however haltingly at first, and then fills her with self-confidence by praising her explication of the poems he introduces her to. But none of this works, because through the first reels Maggie is drawn as such an obnoxious, selfish leech that it’s impossible for her to turn around enough to deserve the easy embrace of those she’s so callously wronged. You can’t help but feel that she should suffer at least a bit of punishment for all she’s done rather than simply getting off scot-free. Grant and Hanson also fall back far too frequently on crotchety old-folks humor, not involving MacLaine so much as Francine Beers as Ella’s closest friend Mrs. Lefkowitz, who might be slow on her feet but is astronomically fast with a quip, “Golden Girls” style, and Jerry Adler as a fellow interested romantically in Ella. The clueless dad, wicked stepmother number also gets quite a workout. It’s no wonder that the picture lumbers over the finish line at nearly 130 minutes–an unconscionably long running-time for material that doesn’t bear the closest scrutiny.

“In Her Shoes” is well produced, with classy widescreen cinematography by Terry Stacey, but it’s afflicted with a score by Mark Isham that’s too cute by more than half. Ultimately, however, though slightly better than most smiles-and-tears chick flicks, it’s not worth settling into a theatre seat to watch. It will work better as a DVD double-feature with “Beaches” six months down the road.