Their father Michael (Ken Howard) and his second wife, the unbearable Sydelle (Candice Azzara) are also fed up with Maggie's immaturity and tell her she is not welcome in their house until she gets her act together.  While Rose attempts to juggle her job and an affair with a fellow colleague Jim Danvers (Richard Burgi of TV's "Desperate Housewives"), Maggie continues to take advantage of her loving sibling by borrowing her clothes and her vast collection of shoes (and stealing money in the process) and in a vein/vain attempt auditions for an MTV on-air VJ position but is crestfallen when her ugly secret (she's illiterate) rears its head and she instead on a whim seduces Jim only for them to be discovered (natch) by an -at-her-wits'end Rose who promptly dumps Jim/quits her job and tells Maggie she has to leave immediately.

With nowhere to go Maggie 'charges' Jim $200 as he drops her off at the bus station and she changes her mind for Manhattan to head to Florida where she decides to look up her believed-to-be-deceased grandmother, Ella Hirsch.  Earlier that day Maggie discovered a drawer full of unopened childhood birthday cards with Ella's name and address and still containing their bounties of $5 gifts intact.

Ella (a wonderfully low-key Shirley MacLaine) is shocked to find her gorgeous granddaughter all grown up and on her doorstep of her retirement community where she is an active volunteer and living a life-long lie in regards to her late daughter (she promised to raise her daughters but fate in the form of Michael intervened), who was thought to have died in a car accident.

With Maggie gone Rose improvises a dog-walking service when she attempts to return a dog to the dog-grooming job Maggie had before her impromptu jet to Florida.  Rose finds some solace in this but realizes she misses Maggie begrudgingly but learns that she can't reach her cell phone sending her into a deep funk.  Until she meets up with another law firm colleague Simon Stein (Mark Feuerstein), who has been in love with her from the time they first met.  They begin a series of at first reluctant dates but eventually Rose sees this nice Jewish man for what he is and jumps into an engagement.  Sadly she cannot share her news with her best friend and sole mate Maggie, who has been forced to take a volunteer gig at the local retirement hospice where she befriends a blind elderly former English professor (the great Norman Lloyd), who asks her to read poetry to him.  Eventually Maggie learns more to read and eventually the sisters are reunited.

Susannah Grant's adaptation is wonderfully funny, smart, acerbic and touching in the right equal dollops of emotion touching each chord accordingly.  Diaz and Collette are a pitch perfect combination of sexy, independent women attempting to overcome their differences and embrace their true personalities, each a part of each others' whole.  MacLaine balances out the rough edges with her portrayal of a woman who also learns some lessons and realizes how empty her life truly was without her family and the results are bittersweet wonderful.  Directed by veteran Curtis Hanson who is adept at adaptations ("L.A. Confidential" and "Wonder Boys", to wit) and allows his vastly talented actors enough legroom to feel one another out with surprising comfort - not unlike the perfect pair of shoes, fittingly so.

Film Rating: 3 out of 4