Cameron and Toni step out

Curtis Hanson, who made the hard-boiled LA Confidential, could hardly have changed gear more abruptly than with this film culled from Jennifer Weiner's proto-feminist bestseller.

It's about two sisters, Cameron Diaz, a pretty but feckless party girl, the other, Toni Collette, a Princeton graduate at a top Philadelphia law firm, who travel a bumpy road towards mutual self-esteem.

During the overlong journey the unemployable party girl makes a mess of her plainer sister's pristine flat before seducing her boyfriend and moving off to Florida. There she discovers they have a grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) whom both thought was dead.

The feisty old granny, living in a luxurious care home with a lot of ogling old gentlemen, puts them both right in the end, but the gently traumatic emotional trip never seems wholly convincing.

While Diaz and Collette give nicely shaded performances, and MacLaine knows exactly what she is doing, there's a lack of real bite to the film. This is made worse by one of those irritating musical scores during which strings soar and a piano tinkles to provide a suitably sentimental backdrop.

Perhaps a woman director would have made it sharper and more convincing than Hanson seems able.

In Her Shoes
Cert: 12A