This is the tale of five inseparable female friends who reunite ten years after their college graduation. At the reunion, there is a "show-and-tell" exercise where each woman has to reveal a secret that was major transgression in her life over the past decade. The clever premise of the film is that one of the women blackmails the others for $20,000 in return for keeping their secrets.
The mood of the film is light, and there are five well-developed characters. The Fab Five includes a university English professor who plagiarized a paper; a stock broker guilty of insider trading; a dermatologist who wrote an illegal prescription for much needed cash; a housewife who has been unfaithful to her husband in a one-timer with her yoga teacher; and a jet-setter who is covering a stint in a rehab facility for alcoholism.
The only disappointing part of the film was the ending that seemed too pat, including both the motivation for the blackmailer and the seemingly effortless method of resolving the crisis. It was difficult to believe that one crucial character who was an outsider simply left the room in order to wrap up the film in a tidy manner.
It is surprising how effective the filmmakers were in stringing out this sit com-like experience for a full ninety minutes. Credit must go to the performers who created the interesting spectrum of characters. There was a human element implicit in all five of their stories that made them especially human, yet made it difficult to assign blame for the crime of blackmail.
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