TV's longtime Friend portrayed a cashier dissatisfied with her life and her marriage in the critically acclaimed sleeper The Good Girl. In Friends With Money she's a maid dissatisfied with her life and her singleness. Very adult themes for our old ditzy pal Rachel.

Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, whose Lovely and Amazing was another female-centered ensemble film, Friends With Money looks at three marriages and one single girl who's not sure she wants what her friends want for her.

Jane (Frances McDormand) is a clothing designer who is grappling with free-floating anger and depression and whose husband, Aaron (Simon McBurney), might be gay. Christine (Catherine Keener) is slowly realizing that her husband's self-absorption and callousness are beginning to rub off on her. Only Franny (Joan Cusack), a stay-at-home mom, and her husband, Matt (Greg Germann), seem even remotely happy with each another.

Aniston's Olivia remains single among the couples, moving from a job teaching rich teenagers to working as a housemaid. She hops from an affair with a married man to one with a personal trainer (Scott Caan) who seems more interested in sex and in filching what little money she makes than in getting to know her.

Though well-acted and one of those rare Hollywood films about women who are neither young nor old, Friends With Money feels disjointed and lacking in focus.

The considerable talents of these four actresses seem wasted on a script that is ambiguous at best and at worst leaves the viewer full of questions. How is the much younger and poorer Olivia friends with the other three? Is Aaron gay, or is he not? And why is Jane so unhappy when her husband is attentive, caring and sweet, her son adorable, her career fulfilling?

Still, the dialogue among the women does ring true, something few movies accomplish, especially when the women are not talking about men. Holofcener's strength, clearly, is writing dialogue.

Characterizing this movie as a comedy, too, is deceptive, since there were few really funny moments and more squirmy, uncomfortable ones, mostly with Olivia, who seems determined to find new ways to humiliate herself.

Feel free to skip the extras, which include a short bit of the Los Angeles premiere with shots of a conspicuously solo Aniston and a behind-the-scenes featurette that's not particularly enlightening and consists mainly of the actors extolling Holofcener. The premiere and Sundance Film Festival featurettes feel as if they were shot by a pair of nervous parents at a child's school play.

A film as low-frills as this one probably doesn't warrant tons of extras; still, the ones included here could have been better. The Sundance featurette, in particular, is probably less than five minutes long.

The behind-the-scenes extra features interesting conversations with the male actors, providing another perspective to this film about women aging - or failing to.

*1/2 Gimmickless and great, Nicole Holofcener's portrait of four L.A. friends... is funny, sad, and full of trenchant observations about life, loneliness, marriage and materialism.

Behind-the-scenes featurette; Sundance featurette; Los Angeles premiere featurette; audio commentary with writer-director Nicole Holofcener and producer Anthony Bregman.

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