Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

… This movie a chance. Please Give is a movie about guilt and what happens when it becomes all consuming. Based on one New Yorker’s similar story, Please Give explores what it’s like to have so much in a world where so many have so little. Yet this isn’t a Michael Moore documentary, instead it simply tells the story of one New York family and their next door neighbors. Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) live in a beautiful New York apartment and run a store on 10^th avenue that sells furniture they have bought from the children of deceased parents. Not surprisingly, these children are often in a hurry to sell the furniture because they “don’t have time for this” and Kate and Alex make a huge profit. Their job basically consists of the morbid reality of waiting for people to die, including their next door neighbor who is 94, from whom they have already bought her apartment in order to expand their own. Also intermixed in the storyline are the granddaughters, Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet), whose interactions with the primary family add depth to the story.

Courtesy of Sony Picture Classics

What’s great about the characters is that they make you think about your own life, and whether this world is really creating selfish individuals who only care about themselves, along with a significant socio-economic  gap. For example, Kate and Alex’s daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), who may look familiar from her interactions with Little J on Gossip Girl during the Cotillion fiasco, wants more than anything to buy a pair of $200 jeans and acts like a spoiled brat when her mother won’t buy them for her. While I admit that her tantrums are a little annoying, they are dead on for a teenage girl who has spent her life getting everything she wants. In an age when every kid over the age of 8 has an iPhone, it really brings to mind the question of what are we really teaching kids these days? And in an age where everyone has everything, how do you raise unselfish children?

Another issue the film brings to the forefront is the issue of homelessness, as Kate cannot pass a homeless person without giving money because she feels too bad. This issue of guilt is continuous as we see her attempt to find a volunteer job in the city. But be it reading to the elderly or recreational activities with children with Down syndrome, Kate can’t stop crying and feeling, you guessed it, guilty.

There are some other interesting storylines that I won’t give away, but all in all this film is one that really makes you think about your own life and society, in a good way. Though some of the casting seems questionable (Oliver Platt seemed like an odd choice, and you’ll see what I mean when you see the movie) and some of the storylines seem underdeveloped. Regardless, do yourself a favor and see this film that will leave you walking out of the movie theater thinking about how you want to become a better person.