Made-Up (2004)
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Synopsis: When Elizabeth gave up her acting career to become a wife and mother, it was a liberating choice. She let her hair go gray, stopped worrying about every extra pound, and laughed when her teenage daughter Sara nagged her about her appearance. But then Duncan, the husband she thought adored... When Elizabeth gave up her acting career to become a wife and mother, it was a liberating choice. She let her hair go gray, stopped worrying about every extra pound, and laughed when her teenage daughter Sara nagged her about her appearance. But then Duncan, the husband she thought adored her, leaves her for a beautiful and much younger woman. At the same time, Sara becomes obsessed with appearance and threatens to drop out of school and become a beautician, a career choice that horrifies Elizabeth. Kate, Elizabeth's older sister, is searching for a subject for her documentary video class, and sees the perfect opportunity. She persuades Elizabeth to let Sara do an elaborate makeover on her. With a tape-on face-lift, eye-tucks, girdle, and wig, Elizabeth is transformed - at least fifteen years younger, very glamorous, with a new zest and self-confidence. Sara arranges a meeting at a restaurant between her mother and father to show off her creation, but the focus of Elizabeth's attention wanders to Max, the restaurant's owner. In an effort to spice up her video with a little romance, Kate sets up a date for Max and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, believing Max is only interested in her "made-up" self, transforms herself again for their date. Despite a host of glitches and a near disaster, Elizabeth likes Max, and she loves feeling sexy again. When a production company considers developing the video project into a romantic comedy, Kate's obsession soars. She is certain she has a seminal work on beauty and aging and believes she can turn her video documentary - and her sister's life - into a comedy. When company executives complain that her sister is boring, Kate goes overboard to make Elizabeth interesting. Does Kate go too far? Perhaps. But that's where the comedy begins. What starts as a mother-daughter documentary turns into a Sister Film about beauty and aging, passion and creativity, seeing and being seen - a coming of middle age comedy. -- © 2002 Sister Films [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Brooke Adams, Lynne Adams, Gary Sinise, Eva Amurri
DVD Info
Release:
Aug 30, 2005
DVD Features:
Audio:
- (unspecified) - English
- Subtitles - Spanish, French - Closed Captioned
- Subtitles - Spanish, French - Optional
Additional Release Material:
- Documentary - "The Making of MADE-UP"
- Audio Commentary - "Commentary on the Commentary" - Ian Shoales - Humorist/Public Radio Commentator
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Reviews
A lot like Tammy Faye Bakker; you just know it has good intentions, but it ends up as a smeary facsimile of what it wants to be.
Delivers billboard-sized messages about preconceptions of beauty and youth..., before the whole thing goes off the rails into a forced and humorless farce.
Salvaged by one meta-read that carries some weight as Shalhoub, an Arab-American of Lebanese descent, directs a film about the ills of stereotyping based on appearance.
This tiresome movie feels too flimsy for the waters beyond the film festival circuit.
It's a family affair that unfortunately looks too much like a feature-length home movie.
It wants, as Kate says about her documentary, to be a 'seminal work on beauty and aging.' But it wears like a gauzy romantic comedy.
Droll... but too psychologically fuzzy to engender more than of-the-moment laughs, Made-Up ping-pongs from cultural satire to wan proclamations of 'sisterhood.'
Resorts to tired shtick and soap-opera-level tensions to drive its points home with all the subtlety of a brick flung through a window.
The film wants to satirize both our fixation on appearances and reality filmmaking, but its strained humor and litany of cliches add little to either topic.
If Made-Up sounds all over the place, it is. And we don't suggest you follow.
A comedy with lots going on and with considerable depth and complexity.
Voice-overs and commentaries are piled on top of contrived intimate moments until, despite some easygoing performances, the movie -- the actual movie -- is a blur of undercooked motivations and halfhearted improv.
The few meaningful moments occasionally generated are all but engulfed by fussy, meaningless distraction and wandering trivialities
Made-Up is a funny film that catches the different shades of beauty in the lives of a small cross-cut of women.
The rest of the cast spend so much time trying to avoid tripping over each other and the electric wires strewn all over the carpets that the suspension of disbelief becomes an increasingly strenuous chore.


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