Product Description

Sisters Tanzie and Ava (Hilary and Haylie Duff) have it all ? designer clothes to wear, hunky guys to date and millions of dollars to spend. Their life has been one big party since inheriting their dad's cosmetics company... but the party ends when a product scandal leaves the celebutantes without a penny to their name. It's a hilarious riches-to-rags tale as the girls go from maximum fun to minimum wage. Co-starring Anjelica Huston and Lukas Haas, MATERIAL GIRLS proves that laughter is always in fashion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40506 in DVD
• Brand: TCFHE/MGM
• Released on: 2006-12-12
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
Glamour girls Hilary and Haylie Duff (featured in Lizzie McGuire and 7th Heaven, respectively) star as cosmetic heiresses Ava and Tanzie Marchetta, whose lives get turned upside down when their deceased father's company is accused of selling toxic products. Wouldn't you know it, Ava and Tanzie decide to go all Erin Brockovich and investigate. Material Girls should be awful--but it isn't. It's not a great film, it may not even be a good film, but it's more watchable than it has any right to be, thanks to the confident and thoughtful guiding hand of director Martha Coolidge (Rambling Rose, Valley Girl). It's hard to say exactly how a director can keep something like Material Girls from being as insipid as, say, New York Minute. Coolidge injects some hint of awareness of what it actually means to be poor, casts some surprising actors (like Anjelica Huston, Prizzi's Honor; Brent Spiner, Star Trek: The Next Generation; and Lukas Haas, Brick), and somehow makes the Marchetta sisters both vapid and sympathetic--all of which is some impressive cinematic alchemy. The result is the most enjoyable film of Hilary Duff's career. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

So Psyched!
I am so happy to finally know a release date for this! I went and saw the movie on opening weekend, I was able to talk my dad into going, which was cool because we used to have a tradition of going to the movies before school started, but we hadn't gone in so long, and actually, most of the movies I like are movies I would not feel comfortable seeing with my dad. This is a family friendly movie, and I think anyone with an open mind would enjoy it. I loved it, I am a 23 year old Hilary Duff fan, and proud, but even my dad enjoyed the movie, then again he always preferred "clean" movies to some of the more mainstream inappropriate films. This movie will definitely be in my collection, and when I have kids I will very comfortably watch it with them.

Overall, great movie, funny, inspiring.

Don't waste your time
I had heard mixed reviews of this movie, enough to make me curious at the rental store. I give kudos to anyone who's patient enough to watch this movie the whole way through.

Material Girls stars sisters Hilary and Hayley Duff as two fictional sisters who are heiresses to a major corporation and the money it produces. The Marchetta girls are the faces of the Marchetta cosmetics company, started by their late father, but that's all they really are - the figureheads. The company is actually run by their father's best friend and the man who holds their company - and fortune - in trust. When a scandal breaks loose regarding toxic ingredients in the cosmetics and facially damaging products, the sisters lose their fortune overnight and become "poor." (Sort of.) But something doesn't seem right... so they take matters into their own hands and investigate the situation.

It's hard to imagine that anyone could be so clueless about the real world and the issues that regular people face, but the Marchetta girls don't think beyond the latest fashion or party. They're so self-focused to the point of rudeness, and it's not until the tables are turned that they realize there's a bigger world out there. (And they're still pretty rude and self-centered.) I also found some things hard to believe - from what I could tell, the girls weren't of age (hence the "in trust" issue with their father's friend), and yet they're living in this huge mansion with no one to supervise them but servants. Where's their mother? When their house burns down they don't turn to family, they turn to their former housekeeper to take them in.

This movie had potential to be a really good coming-of-age story, if the two Marchetta sisters were allowed to grow up. As it was, once they decided to "investigate," I just skipped ahead on the DVD to the very predictable ending. I was extremely disgusted with their behavior throughout most of the movie and the fact that, in spite of their hardships, they didn't seem to learn anything. They just complained about their situation (no valets? we have to take the bus? we have to clean things?) and still managed to come out on top.

There are much better movies out there that actually have the main characters grow and learn something through adversity. This one isn't even worth the space it holds on the rental shelf.

A good effort but....
3 stars for effort.
This ALMOST was a good movie. I thought for sure it would be good because usually riches to rags stories are. (Just my luck" was cute, I thought.)
This went nowhere, then DIED in the middle.

Although the IDEA was good, the story flopped, and this is why.
Whoever edited it did a bad job. It was choppy, and a lot of it seemed FORCED.Certain scenes seemed totally out of synch.

ALSO, It was more Haylie's debut film, and Hillary was sort of just thrown in there...and truth is, I really don't care for Haylie Duff.
But all stars try getting thier sisters in, I guess.
Britney did it with Jamie Lynn, Lindsay Lohan is trying to get her sis Ali in, and so on...

Anyway, had there been better editing, and the focus wasn't so much on Haylie, it could have been a good movie. The IDEA was good, but that is where it ended.
Maybe worth a rental but not a buy.