Hanging Up

If there's one thing worse than Walter Matthau playing a horny geezer, it's Walter Matthau playing a horny geezer who's dying. Indeed, a little geriatric jesting goes a long way in Diane Keaton's directorial follow-up to 1995's Unstrung Heroes. As a boozer addled with Alzheimer's, the Grumpy Old Men star gleefully subverts senility into stupidity, ranting about the un-Duke-like proportions of John Wayne's dick and goosing an unsuspecting rear end as he utters, "Coodgie, woodgie." Yet because Nora and Delia Ephron penned the script, the focus -- gratefully! -- shifts away from Matthau's senescent shtick to the gluey-eyed charm of Meg Ryan.

With pluck and poignancy, Ryan plays the "good daughter," the one who cares for dad while her wretchedly self-absorbed kin (Keaton and Lisa Kudrow, both trapped in caricature) steamroll over her like a couple of monster trucks. However, for every flash of authenticity, there's a shower of clichés, most of which self-righteously tsk-tsk at ambitious women. All the while the family's main mode of communication -- the telephone -- rings and blares and chirps until this King Lear-ian allegory feels like one bad connection.

-- Alicia Potter