Crush (2001)

REVIEW
Undoubtedly an attempt to ride the coattails of the wildly successful "Sex and the City," this study in female angst at age 40 is as unconvincing as it is tedious. The story revolves around three professional women -- Kate (MacDowell), Molly (Chancellor) and Janine (Staunton) -- who seem to look for love in all the wrong places and who seem to revel in their misery within a haze of cigarette smoke and idle chatter. These women all seem unabashedly sad and perhaps if writer-director McKay’s script were content to acknowledge this and engage in a simple character study limited by the very real concerns of middle-aged single women, Crush might have been a worthwhile entertainment. Instead, the course of events -- the usual, if implausible combination of romance, untimely deaths, more drinking, smoking, and incessant whining -- comes across as simultaneously maudlin and a little ridiculous. Despite credible performances by all three leads, the characters and the situations those characters find themselves in are more than a little bit cartoonish.