The movie is so well-cast, sympathetically acted and delicately directed -- and so genuinely touching and funny -- that it leaps right out of the narrow confines of the family bonding formula.

This is the most enjoyable film of its type in recent memory.

It's wonderfully satisfying: Collette, MacLaine and Diaz are exceptional, and the mix of humor and heartbreak is perfectly calibrated.

Starts out with the materials of an ordinary movie and becomes a rather special one.

No great claims should be made for In Her Shoes. If the aim here was to show how chick lit can become just plain lit, the effort failed. But there is something to be said for froth when it's expertly whipped.

Manipulative, but confidently so, and improbably but consistently affecting.

While on the surface very much a girls' film, this ruefully honest picture has something to say to everyone.

When superb craftsmanship, discipline, and risk-taking (toning down Diaz and MacLaine; treating Collette as a desirous leading lady) are applied to accessible, even frivolous material, the results can be deeply pleasurable. In Her Shoes isn't a masterpiece, but it's the best Saturday-night movie millions of people are going to go to.

Maintains a breezy charm throughout and contains many extremely funny sequences.

It's Hanson's astute directing that makes the film's life lessons go down painlessly, turning the smartly entertaining In Her Shoes into a comfy fit for both sexes.

It's an earnest, contemporary drama about adults -- OK, women -- that has no use for irony or cynicism, no room for cutting-edge, clever hipness.

A rollicking, mascara-smearing, intergenerational coed crowd-pleaser. Imagine "Sex and the City" negotiating "Terms of Endearment" with "The Golden Girls."

Simply clicks on every level. From the surprising depth of the story, to the smooth and sometimes brilliant performances, to Hanson's clear mastery of form.

The joy of this unassuming, generous film is that it never sells out its characters' desires or ours.