Family starts with F, same as a four-letter word

Amid the news from Iraq, the mounting deficit (“starve the beast”), those Southern folks still homeless because of Katrina and Rita, the problems of Tom DeLay and the controversy surrounding Judith Miller and her “source ,” it’s pretty clear what the world most wants to know is – how good is “In Her Shoes.”

Haven’t heard of it? Sure you have. It’s the movie that features Cameron Diaz as a dipsy dyslexic loser, Toni Collette as her workaholic tub of a sister and Shirley MacLaine as the grandmother neither sister has seen since childhood (and whom only one even remembers).

In other words, a comedy.

I have to put that in there because with all the fighting and blaming and pouting and sulking and shouting, it’s hard to remember that there are some funny moments, too.

Here are the problems, though:

1, Diaz’s character is so much of a loser that it’s pretty clear all she needs is a vocation to emerge into the world of simple self-maintenance. And, hmmmm, she has an eye for shoes, so even though she dresses as if she were ready to do a pole dance , let’s make her a professional shopper.

2, Collette’s character is so driven that it’s hard to see the gorgeous swan we know is lurking inside. But, of course, giving up your law career to become a dog-walker will do wonders for anyone’s self-image. And, you know, until now I had missed the lawyer joke completely.

3, MacLaine’s character is one of those women who maintains a stiff exterior but whom we know has a loving side because she has a junior David Cross (only with a clean mouth) as a best friend (a geriatric played by Francine Beers ). So it comes as no surprise that not only does she have it in her to love the first ungrateful grandchild to visit her, but she can find it in herself to sympathize with the man whom she has, for years, blamed for her daughter’s death.

4, So if you haven’t guessed by now, “In Her Shoes” is one of those movies that solves several lifetimes of problems in its two-hour-plus running time. Which, of course, is just like real life. Hell, in my first marriage, every visit to the old in-laws’ Ohio homestead was a wonderful opportunity for healing – though, for the life of me, I still can’t understand why it never happened.

Oh, yeah, now I remember. My former mother-in-law had the funny habit of, heh-heh, eating her young. Well, only symbolically. But pretty effectively. (Probably all she needed was a vocation .)

So, there you have it. “In Her Shoes”: a film that says no matter the pain, no matter the insult, no matter how many times your sister seduces your boyfriend or steals your money and jewels or breaks the heel off your favorite pair of shoes or spills ice cream all over your kitchen floor (and refuses to clean it up) or brings a “borrowed” dog into your bed or causes your car to be towed and causes you to miss an important date in court – ah, well, the client was probably guilty anyway – family is still the most important thing in our lives.

And that’s the good news for today.

Below: Cameron Diaz co-stars with Toni Collette as the more dysfunctional of a duo of sisters in “In Her Shoes.”