Boaz Yakin is my cup of tea

Boaz Yakin is someone I've been following since he wrote and directed 1994's "Fresh", which is one of the best films I've ever seen. None of his subsequent projects have had the power of that movie but I'm an unbelievably (and disgustingly) loyal Leo, and I will keep seeing anything the man writes and/or directs.

This one, Uptown Girls, is directed by Yakin, and it does display his knack for getting decent interaction from his performers; there are some extremely believable scenes between Murphy and Fanning, in particular, who both manage, under his direction and thanks to their innate talent (especially the soon-to-be-legendary Fanning's), to breathe genuine life into their potentially one-dimensional characters.

I hadn't read anything about the movie beforehand, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it play out not as a farce but rather as a skewed and quirky buddy movie, with both characters learning from each other what it means to be human, at any age. Good use of subordinate characters as well, and although the film is hardly a masterpiece by any stretch, it most definitely has its heart in the right place.