Made-Up

A Coming of (Middle) Age Comedy

When Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) gave up her acting career to become a wife and mother, it was a liberating choice. She let her hair go gray, stopped worrying about every extra pound, and laughed when her teenage daughter Sara (Eva Amurri) nagged her about her appearance.

But now that her husband Duncan (Gary Sinise) has left her for a much younger woman (Light Eternity), her daughter's desperation to give her an overhaul starts to resonate. The drawback: it is precisely Sara's preoccupation with beauty and her determination to make that her career choice that appalls Elizabeth. "I was prepared for a lot of things. A heroin addict, a nymphomania, but a cosmetologist!?" Kate (Lynn Adams), Elizabeth's older sister, an aspiring filmmaker, sees this as the perfect subject matter for her documentary. She persuades Elizabeth to let Sara do an elaborate makeover on her.

Kate, convinced that "The film could use a little romance and it wouldn't do you any harm either" invites Max (Emmy Award® winner Tony Shalhoub), an unassuming restaurant owner, over for a date. Elizabeth, convinced that Max is only interested in her "made-up" self, transforms herself again for their date. Despite a host of glitches and near disasters, Elizabeth is attracted to Max, and she enjoys her newfound sex appeal.

Made-Ip - a droll satire on our culture's obsession with appearance - is Tony Shalhoub's stunning directorial debut. Working from a richly layered script, which crosscuts between characters who are facing real truths and the documentary crew who are filming them, Shalhoub spins a mordantly comic tale while examining the fraught ties between mothers, daughters, sisters and exes.