Material Girls

Plot

Tanzania "Tanzie" (Hilary Duff) and Ava (Haylie Duff), two rich, spoiled Hollywood socialite sisters who enjoy material things such as shopping and dating, rather than caring about the family cosmetics company Marchetta Cosmetics which was founded by Victor Manchetta (Philip Casnoff). When Victor passes away and Tanzie and Ava's mother married to a prince, Marchetta Cosmetics is run by its co-founder and family friend Tommy Katzenbach (Brent Spiner). One year later, Tanzie plans to go to college in the future and Ava is planning to announce her engagement with fiancè Mic (Brandon Beemer) to the public, despite having been engaged months ago.

When a major media scandal involving their father's night cream causing extreme skin conditions breaks out on the news, the press soon mob the girls, causing theirs and their father's reputation destroyed, forcing them to stay inside. Soon, an accidental fire starts in their mansion. Ava quickly grabs her engagement party dress and some miscellaneous objects. Tanzie, on the other hand, takes her father's TiVo which had a recording of her father talking about his cosmetics on the news and doesn't grab any clothes. They leave for a hotel and soon learn all their credit cards have been shut down, leaving the girls completely broke. So they go and stay with their maid and close family friend Inez (María Conchita Alonso) in her small apartment and their car gets stolen by two guys (Joel Madden and Benji Madden) they mistakenly took them for valets.

The next morning, Ava and Tanzie take a bus to Ava's engagement party. They go to Ava’s engagement party, where they see Etienne make a break for it once they see the girls arrive, realizing that their friends only liked them for their money and reputation. Ava also finds out that Mic has dumped her, though it was done through Mic’s agent Sol (Larry Poindexter). Tommy plans to persuade the board of directors to sell the their Marchetta Cosmetics to their biggest competitor Fabiella (Anjelica Huston) for over $60 million. The girls however, are tempted to listen to their advisors as they all agree to sell the company to Fabiella and gives them 30 days to make the deal official. After the company's lab technician/chemist Rick (Marcus Coloma) gets them away from the press, Ava and Tanzie decide to make their own investigation by asking legal clinic lawyer Henry (Lukas Haas). He refuses to help them as he thinks they can help themselves for being high privileged.

Although this means that they could return to the extravagant lifestyle they were accustomed to, they decide to honor their father's memory by trying to turn it around themselves. The girls decide to get to the root of the scandal.

When they track down the cat lady who was the source of the allegations, they learn from a neighbor that she was in fact born with a skin disease that caused her disfiguration and had just received surgery for it. With what they have learned, the girls successfully manage to clear the Marchetta name and reclaim the company when they revealed that Tommy was behind the scandal and plotted to sell the company to Fabiella at a cheap price when she, Tommy, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, and some other people meet with them. With help from the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Ava and Tanzie remove Tommy as the CEO.

Nearly six months after the scandal began, the girls are seen leading the company, with Ava as the new CEO and Tanzie working as a chemist with them both finding their true loves. For Tanzie, it was Rick. For Ava, it was Henry.

Cast

Production

The film began production on April 18, 2005, in Los Angeles, California. For the film's soundtrack, Hilary Duff recorded two new songs: "Happy" (which features the same music as "Play with Fire", her single released in August 2006) and a Timbaland-produced cover version of Madonna's song "Material Girl", which was the inspiration for the film's story and is featured at the beginning of the film.

Release

On March 31, 2006, the entertainment site AndPop.com reported that Lukas Haas had said he did not expect the film to be released. These statements were confirmed on April 5, in an article in The Ryersonian. Haas expressed his unhappiness with the film, and said they had been trying to sell the film for a long time with little success. On April 6, the website Box Office Mojo reported that MGM had picked up the rights to Material Girls and would be releasing it on August 25 (this was later changed to August 18). On May 2, the official website for Martha Coolidge reported that it would be released on around 2,000 screens.

Material Girls was released in 1,500 theaters in the U.S. and debuted at #9 on the weekend box office chart, grossing only US$4.62 million in its first three days of release. The DVD for Material Girls was released on December 12, 2006 in the U.S by 20th Century Fox under the MGM Home Entertainment label. It is a double-sided DVD with special features including the music video for Hilary Duff's single "Play with Fire". In the UK the film was released on March 2, 2007 to coincide with the release of Duff's single "With Love", her album Dignity, and the UK release of her scent With Love... Hilary Duff. It was distributed by Twentieth Century Fox. The film has garnered a total of $16,847,695 worldwide.

Reception

The film received extremely negative reviews, with Rotten Tomatoes ranking Material Girls 46th in the 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s, with a rating of 4%, and 17% by Metacritic. Hilary and Haylie Duff's performances were panned by critics and earned both of them Razzie Award nominations for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple.