This Is My Life

This movie has a funny script by Nora and Delia Ephron, (You've Got Mail). Linda Obst (One Fine Day, Hope Floats) is the producer. The music is by Carly Simmon, which is great. Here we have all the ingredients for a good chick movie! Perhaps the lack of box office success it had was because of timing. It was released before Nora and Delia, and Obst were really known in the industry. If it was released today, it would get all the attention. It a really good movie.

Dottie Ingels, Julie Kavner (Forget Paris, Jake's Women) is a single parent. She has two daughters, Erica Ingels, Samantha Mathis (Little Women, The American President) and Opal Ingels, Gaby Hoffmann (Sleepless in Seattle). They live with their Aunt Martha Ingels, Caroline Aaron (Deconstructing Harry ) until Martha dies and leaves them the house which they sell. Dottie can now pursue her dream of becoming a stand up comedian. Aunt Martha had died while she was shopping, she literally shopped until she dropped. No one could figure out which outfit was really hers and as the body went out of the store the alarm went off because the outfit still had the price tag on. Erica plays the critical teenager growing up with a somewhat realistic but by the same token negative view on things. Opal is the little one always trying to cheer things up. The kids are absolutely adorable. Their dialogue makes me laugh! They keep saying: did too, did not, did too, did not? Dottie wears those off-beat outfits, all polka dots. They are small at the beginning of the movie and their get bigger as she gets more famous. Favorite quotes:" Don't chew you hair, sweetheart". Life lesson: Everyone in the world is two phone calls from everyone else in the world you just need to know who the phone calls are." "Sometimes the audience was so dead that they were wearing toe tags." "Dad said that we were going to fidgety like mom...Opal says. Later Erica says it is not fidgety like mom. It is frigid. Opal: do you think that mom is cold in bed"? I recommend this fun movie. It is a feel good movie. I enjoyed watching it.

This would be a great movie to watch during a rainy night in, or whenever. A movie about family bonds, specifically a loving single mom and her two daughters. The movie focuses around this family and their ups and downs.

The mother quits her sales job as she tries to make it as a stand-up comic. However, as she gains popularity, she accidently puts her family-life becomes second to her career.

The movie has some awkward moments, especially for Erica as she's an awkward teen girl. A little *too awkward*, iykyk. I don't see how that scene is PG-13 appropriate. I guess it's different times now.

A charming little movie directed and co-written by the brilliant Nora Ephron. Well drawn characters, inventive script and first-class acting throughout by an ensemble led by Julie Kavner and featuring Carrie. Fisher and Dan Aykroyd. With unusual insight and intelligence, it follows the show business career of a department store cosmetologist, would-be comedienne and single mother and the father who abandoned the children. Few films so realistically and gently portray the tensions in the lives of very good mothers and really good children as they struggle to balance the needs of school, family and career, and not always succeeding. It is easy to identify with these characters and to root for their success.

This is a not so good flick about an aspiring and unfunny stand up comedienne. There is a great little subplot involving the Sam Mathis character and her dopey boyfriend. Ending in a very funny and daring love scene. I would have like to have seen a whole film about the Sam Mathis daughter character and the boyfriend instead. The rest of the film, the script, direction, etc. are the just awful.

I loved this movie when it first came out, and the 3 or 4 times that I have seen it since then. I really identified with the single mom with two kids trying to balance life and work. I was doing the same thing then! It reminded me that if you can find something funny about a difficult time in your life, you may be more able to get through it. Family is everything to Dottie and her kids, and the still unresolved issues at the end are fine, since life usually just continues and not every problem can be resolved at the same time. I recommend this movie to anyone who is trying to balance family and a career and a love life! It made me cry and laugh at the same time!