Material Girls

Material Girls is a 2006 American teen comedy film directed by Martha Coolidge, starring Hilary and Haylie Duff, Anjelica Huston, Lukas Haas, Maria Conchita Alonzo, and Brent Spiner.

It is based on a script written by John Quaintance and the plot was conceived from Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility."

The film was released on August 18, 2006 and it is co-produced by Patriot Pictures and Maverick Films.

Plot
Tanzania "Tanzie" (Hilary Duff) and Ava (Haylie Duff), two rich, spoiled Hollywood socialites who enjoy material things such as shopping and dating instead 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).

A 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.

However, the girls 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 and for Ava, it was Henry.

Cast

 * Hilary Duff as Tanzania "Tanzie" Marchetta
 * Haylie Duff as Ava Marchetta
 * Anjelica Huston as Fabiella Du Mont
 * Lukas Haas as Henry
 * María Conchita Alonso as Inez
 * Brent Spiner as Tommy
 * Faith Prince as Pam
 * Marcus Coloma as Rick
 * Obba Babatundé as Craig
 * Reagan Dale Neis as Jaden
 * Ty Hodges as Etienne
 * Colleen Camp as Charlene
 * Philip Casnoff as Victor Marchetta
 * Tanya Alexander as LaPorscha
 * Dot Jones as Butch Brenda
 * Cheyenne Haynes and Andrea Ramirez as Inez's daughters
 * Brandon Beemer as Mick Rionn
 * Joel Madden and Benji Madden as Mistaken Valets
 * Joanne Baron as Gretchen

Production
The film began production on April 18, 2005, in Los Angeles, California and ended on August 4, 2005. Originally, it was written for Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen.

Release
On March 31, 2006, entertainment website AndPop.com reported that Lukas Haas had said he did not expect the film to be released. These statements were confirmed on April 5, 2006 in an article in The Ryersonian. Haas expressed his unhappiness with the film & said they had been trying to sell the film for a long time with little success.

On April 6, 2006, the website Box Office Mojo reported that MGM had picked up the rights to Material Girls and would be releasing it on August 25th (this was later changed to August 18th).

On May 2, 2006, the official website for Martha Coolidge reported that it would be released on around 2,000 screens.

Box Office
"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.

Critical Reception
"Material Girls" received extremely negative reviews with Rotten Tomatoes ranking it 46th in the 100 worst reviewed films of the 2000s, with a rating of 4% and 17% by Metacritic.

Brian Clark from The Austin Chronicle said the film "mainly offers fodder for tweens who fantasize about glamorous Los Angeles lifestyles where everyone is skinny, rich, and on Prozac" and critiqued the Duff sisters' acting, saying, "Neither one adds to the energy of the film, though, and both seem slightly embarrassed to be there."

Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly magazine gave "Material Girls" a "D"-minus grade and also critiqued the Duff Sisters' acting, saying, "Here the Duffs — playing a pair of dopey rich sisters out to save their late father’s cosmetics company — are so unsympathetic, exasperating, and smug from the get-go that you figure the movie has to be a send-up of the Hiltons, or the Olsens, or something. "

The New York Times called the film an "incompetent spin on the poor-little-rich-girl story."