Georgia Mozell, Eve Marks and Maddy Mozell are adult sisters. Georgia is the editor of her own wildly successful self-titled women's magazine. She strives for publicity at any cost. Party planner Eve is the mother hen of the group, not only of her own family, but also of her siblings and father as their mother, Pat, not only emotionally left their father when they divorced, but her daughters as well. And Maddy is a vacuous soap operaactress who has always struggled for her own identity. Despite being as busy with her own life as the others, Eve is the only one of the three who deals with the long term hospitalization of their cantankerous seventy-nine-year-old father, Lou Mozell, when he enters the early stages of dementia, and the associated outcomes of that hospitalization. Eve is caring for Lou, who himself is a John Wayne fan, despite an especially hurtful incident with him seven years earlier. As the emotional aspect of looking after Lou becomes more and more stressful, Eve has to figure out how to maintain her own sanity, while dealing with her sisters, who believe they too are part of their father's care while they don't lift a finger to help. At one point, Lou ruins a birthday party for Eve's son Jesse and is expelled from the household by Eve's husband Joe. When their father's health worsens, the three sisters reunite and ask who his favorite actress is. Before dying, Lou replies that it is June Allyson. The three sisters mourn their father's death, while flashbacks reveal of Lou having great times with his three daughters and John Wayne. The three sisters get together for Thanksgiving, while Maddy reveals that she has retired as an actress after her character tries a decaf cappuccino and is randomly murdered.
Hanging Up was released in the United States on February 18, 2000, to relatively negative reviews. It made only $15.7 million over the Presidents' Dayopening weekend, opening at #2 behind The Whole Nine Yards. Hanging Up opened in 2,618 theatres at an average of exactly $6,000. It dropped out of the top 10 in its third week of release, and lasted eight weeks in its domestic release. Domestically grossing $36,050,230 with an extra $15,829,814 from worldwide audiences brought its international total to $51,880,044. Hanging Up has a 12% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 85 reviews with an average rating of 3.75/10, The critical consensus reads, "Though the screenplay and the novel it's based on were both written by the same person, critics say Hanging Up is an unsuccessful adaptation. The acting is praised as solid, but is ultimately unable to save the film."
