Adam Scott Gushes About This Underrated Cameron Diaz Rom-Com | Sorry Not Sorry
Adam Scott recently named a 2005 romantic comedy-drama as one of his favorite movies, and it feels like a very specific kind of comfort pick. The actor made the revelation while promoting his 2026 horror movie, Hokum. "There's a movie - I don't think people think it's bad, but a lot of people don't know it - called In Her Shoes," he told JustWatch.
WATCH: Adam Scott Gushes About This Underrated Cameron Diaz Rom-Com
In case anyone is lost, Scott elaborated. "The Curtis Hanson movie from like '05, I think - with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette and Mark Feuerstein and a bunch of great people in it. It's a terrific movie. Curtis Hanson was one of our great filmmakers, and it kind of slipped under the radar at that time. And I remember thinking it was the best movie that year."
In Her Shoes follows two very different sisters whose lives are held together by shared history rather than anything resembling closeness. Cameron Diaz plays Maggie, the impulsive younger sister drifting through jobs and relationships, while testing everyone's patience. Toni Collette plays Rose, the older sibling, who appears far more together thanks to her career-driven personality.
When a family rupture forces them apart, the story slowly begins to explore what it would take for the sisters with the shared tragic past to actually understand each other in the present. The movie was never positioned as awards-season material, but it was well received for its sincerity that never once tipped into clichéd sentimentality.
Movies That Provide Safe Emotional Returns
The kind of comfort pick category In Her Shoes falls into is one with safe emotional returns because it removes the pressure of emotional unpredictability. Nothing in the story is built to ambush you. Even when the conflict between Maggie and Rose hits its peak, it stays inside a nice, familiar emotional register as they circle the same wounds in slightly different words.
Stories like this end up becoming repeat watches because what people are really returning to is a known emotional outcome. It's not that nothing difficult happens in these films. It just never breaks the emotional contract. You know that underneath the drama is a real-adjacent story that will result in a version of acceptance, reconciliation, and healing for the main characters.
In psychology, it's called the "mere exposure effect," which is basically the idea that repeated contact with familiar material increases preference over time simply because the brain processes it more fluently. And nothing is more predictable than a movie about very different siblings who eventually find common ground through a major revelation.
And like any other comfort watch, your brain eventually starts to chill out. "When you become immersed in the film, you start lowering what's called the critical faculty, or critical factor, in the brain," therapist Rebecca Lockwood explains. "This allows suggestions into the subconscious mind and creates a perception that the things you are watching are true. You then immerse yourself into them."
Why To Watch 'In Her Shoes' (And What To Watch After)
In Her Shoes is often underestimated on first pass because it's not built around high-concept hooks or narrative shocks. Instead, it relies on performance-driven storytelling, where the emotion comes from how the characters fail and slowly learn to live in the same space again. It's a film about repairing a family that doesn't resolve itself out of existence.
If you've been through any kind of family trauma, In Her Shoes is sure to move you in some way. Another film with real-adjacent familial drama is the 2005 movie, The Family Stone. The story begins when Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) brings his tightly wound girlfriend Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) to his family home for Christmas with the intention of asking her to marry him.
But Meredith is met with a hostile reception. Feeling completely out of her depth, she asks her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to join her, which sets off a chain of even more chaotic events. It carries a similar mix of discomfort and familiarity as In Her Shoes, where conflict isn't the absence of love, but often just the language it gets stuck speaking in. Both movies are streaming on Prime Video.
