The film centers around the Marks family, Brenda Blethyn portraying Jane, the kind but self-conscious matriarch of the clan, Emily Mortimer as her actress daughter Elizabeth, and Catherine Keener as daughter Michelle, the most disaffected of the bunch. Jane's children have grown up, and she's now adopted a young African American girl, Annie (Raven Goodwin).

Jane spends most of the film in the hospital getting liposuction. She somehow doesn't seem the type to be getting such a surgery, and the whole process is depicted in the film every bit as painfully as it must feel in real life. Holofcener doesn't check her character into the hospital for surgery and breeze over the painful recovery. What makes this time interesting is that her absence from Annie's life is very apparent. Annie doesn't function well without her, and she gropes for attention from her sisters.

One of the wonderful things about the film is that Jane never discusses her reasons for adopting Annie, nor does she congratulate herself on her goodwill. When someone tells her how lucky Annie is to have her, she denies it, saying that every little girl should have a mother.

Unfortunately, daughter Michelle isn't quite so generous. She's a loving mother to her own daughter, but her marriage is failing. Her only other interest is her unappreciated art: she creates small chairs out of twigs. At one point, she attempts to sell her crafts to a shopkeeper and runs into an old friend from school. The friend tells her that she's now a pediatrician, and Michelle can't believe what the woman has accomplished already. "We're thirty-six," the woman responds. "Yeah," says Michelle, "but we're not thirty-six thirty-six." Spoken like a true underachiever.

In an attempt to appease her husband, who is understandably upset that he's single-handedly paying the bills while she makes crafts she can't sell, Michelle takes a job at a one-hour photo shop. Her boss is the teenage son of the owner, played to geeky but cute perfection by Jake Gyllenhaal. Of course he develops a crush on Michelle; shockingly, an affair ensues. Again, Holofcener doesn't allow her characters their experiences in a vacuum. Michelle's affair has consequences rarely depicted on film for an older woman/younger man pairing.

Meanwhile, sister Elizabeth has her own set of issues to deal with. She has inherited many of her mother's traits, both good and bad. On one hand, she opens her home to so many stray dogs that she's running a sort of informal animal shelter. On the other hand, she's very concerned with her physical imperfections, however minor. It's understandable that she would be concerned with her appearance, being an actor, but she is so obsessed that her relationship ends as a result of her fixation.

After breaking up with her boyfriend, Elizabeth hooks up with a fellow actor who shares her body obsession. In one of the film's funniest scenes, she convinces him to go over her body and critique it, down to the tiniest detail. Though Elizabeth is a beautiful woman, he comes up with an amusingly long list. Later, an ironic incident occurs which will damage her looks, and one almost feels she is relieved.

Watching a film like Lovely & Amazing, I'm reminded of what's wrong with so many other films that are released today. If you're in the market for Eye Candy: The Movie, then go see Men in Black II or some such drivel. If you'd like to identify with the characters you watch, laugh as they go about their lives, and think about a film longer than five minutes after it ends, Lovely & Amazing is your best bet this summer.

Jean Flynn Wyant, 2002