LOVELY & AMAZING

If it weren’t for the subtle performance of Raven Goodwin as a black girl being raised by a white mother and her two neurotic thirty-something daughters, Nicole Holofcener’s (Walking and Talking) movie about a dysfunctional family of women would be a total cliche. It’s impossible to summon even pity for the characters as each goes through some self-hating crisis about her body image, which triggers other disasters — arrest for statutory rape, liposuction gone wrong, impending divorce. Goodwin, as a tragically funny 8-year-old conflicted about her weight and skin color, is the only one that rises out of this mental morass.