Explaining the movie (SPOILERS)
“Uptown Girls” is way more than a shallow ‘chick flick’ romcom.
The movie’s a comedy/drama (dramedy) that tries to be amusing while addressing weighty issues that most viewers can relate to one way or another. It also attempts to provide the answers for genuine healing and deliverance in its mere 92 minutes and, in my opinion, was successful. Let me explain…
The film sets up two broken people who are off mentally/spiritually, which – in their cases – is due to grief and the opposite ways they handle it: Molly refuses to grow up and is stuck in a flighty, messy rut spinning around in circles while Ray turns to hypochondria and stifles her emotions under the pretense of mean-spirited stoicism and neat-freak orderliness.
Molly’s failed suicide attempt is a stab at black humor, but also shows that she doesn’t know how to escape her dilemma and therefore cannot, by herself. Meanwhile Ray’s condition illustrates that “meds” (the favorite non-answer of psychiatrists) can, at best, help a person cope with their ill condition, but drugs cannot actually heal or deliver people. In fact, they usually have negative side-effects, mentally and physically.
The ‘answer’ the film provides for genuine restoration/success is twofold: (1.) finding and taking advantage of a “golden connection” and (2.) discovering and cultivating one’s special talent, whatever that might be.
Concerning the first, Molly needed someone like Ray to frankly tell her the truth (to grow up and other gems, like her quote of Mikhail Baryshnikov), but Molly also required her for other reasons (e.g. to receive and appreciate her attention/natural skills/love, which was rejected by Neal in the first act).
Ray, on the other hand, desperately needed Molly to be a mother figure and help her escape her impassive prison. The first thing Molly naturally tries to teach Ray is free-spiritedness and fun. Molly’s later advice for Ray to finally break down and talk to her comatose father – on the grounds that it would improve his condition – was not wrong, although Ray took it that way because he immediately passes away. Actually, this shows that the only reason her father was lingering on this plane in his comatose state was because he subconsciously wanted to “talk” with his daughter and make sure she was okay before passing on.
Regarding the second, Molly discovers that her natural knack is fashion design and inspiration (not to mention her strong social gifting), which she wisely decides to cultivate thru formal schooling. Ray conversely realizes the folly of rigid stoicism while learning she is gifted as a dancer/performer.
Murphy’s premature death – from cardiac arrest due to accidental overdose of a mixture of over-the-counter & prescription drugs presumably for a respiratory infection – was sad and tragic, but the only link it had to this movie is that Brittany inadvertently failed to take the film’s wise counsel.