Plot

With a handful of dry one-liners that pepper the script with much-needed comic relief, LOVELY & AMAZING takes a glimpse at the everyday lives of three sisters and their middle-aged mom. Michelle (Catherine Keener) is the eldest sister. She is an artist that makes tiny chairs out of twigs and moss, but cannot seem to find a market for them. Her husband, who grows more distant daily, nags her to get a real job. The light of her life is her 8-year-old daughter, but even there, she seems to cling to an ideal vision of motherhood that she has not yet achieved. Her sister Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), an actress, struggles to overcome insecurities about her looks and has a bad habit of collecting stray dogs. Annie (Raven Goodwin), is their adopted African American sister who is 8 years old, overweight, and feels out of place. Jane (Brenda Blethlyn), their mother, is loving but self-centered, and she is hospitalized throughout the film because of a botched liposuction surgery. Writer/Director Nicole Holofcener (WALKING AND TALKING) imbues the film with an unflinching frankness, banking hard situations and discouraging pitfalls against the stability of this closely-knit middle-class family. No matter how horrible life seems, the family is there as an indestructible safety net.