Were they not already blessed with pithy, snappy titles like Friends With Money and Please Give, the films of writer-director Nicole Holofcener could almost all be called First World Problems. A New York native who got her start working on the sets of Woody Allen movies—clearly an influential experience, creatively speaking—Holofcener specializes in intermittently amusing big-screen sitcoms about the follies and foibles of privileged, city-dwelling women. Obstacles facing her characters have included protecting the family inheritance from a spendthrift husband, waiting on an elderly neighbor to croak in order to expand into her adjacent apartment space, and finding the right time and way to fire the incompetent maid. That last example comes from Holofcener’s latest comedy, Enough Said, but it’s by far the most groan-inducing element of the film. On the whole, this is one of the writer-director’s stronger efforts, largely because it bursts out of the class bubble in which so many of her movies take place and into more universally relatable territory. Yes, the characters are still white financially stable urbanites. This time, though, their problems are not specific to their tax bracket.
