This one made it into our queue because several years ago, when we still were "going out to the movies," we saw "Friends With Money," directed by Nicole Holofcener and starring Catherine Keener as one-half of an affluent married couple ruining the views of their neighbors, and the character of the subdivision, by putting a vertical addition on their house. "Please Give" is also directed by Holofcener and features Keener, who is now one-half of an affluent married couple who have bought the neighbor's Manhattan apartment so that they can knock down the dividing wall and make their own living quarters roomier soon as the ninety-something inhabitant dies. In both movies, the Keener character is afflicted with guilt--to the extent that, in "Please Give," she reads the ads for volunteers, and even goes to a couple of interviews. But assisted living centers and schools for mentally handicapped children are not for her. She has no talent for good works. When she offers cash to a slightly scruffy black man standing on a sidewalk, he explains that he's just waiting for a table.
It's not only the neighbor whose death will help her prosper. She and her husband, played by Oliver Platt, have a used furniture store full of pieces purchased from estates being administered by harried survivors too eager to get on with their lives to make counter offers. The least she can do is grocery shop for the nonagenarian, which brings her into contact with the old lady's granddaughters, one of whom is nice and one of whom isn't. Her husband sleeps with the bad one. The nice one has a notably flattened affect, like the house-cleaning maid played by Jennifer Anniston whose friends had money in the earlier film. Toward the end, the good one gets a nice boyfriend, Platt and the bad one break it off, and everyone comes together for the funeral of the old lady. As if that may not be enough to cheer you up, in the very last scene Keener reconciles with her troubled teen-aged daughter by buying her a very expensive pair of blue jeans.
"Thank you," says the girl. "You're welcome," Keener replies. Then dark screen, roll credits.
The movie has its moments, like when the good granddaughter, an x-ray technician specializing in mammograms, tells her nice boyfriend that to her breasts are just "tubes of potential trouble." I think Amanda liked the movie more than I did, and I'd recommend it.