Charlie Rose

REMant  01/12/2010 05:09 PM Report

Getting all the way thought this film was a chore. If the Europeans liked this, it must have been because it has neither Eddie Murphy nor Clint Eastwood, and feeds their native anti-Americanism. If it says something about the quality of family life here today, I think we are in real trouble. But I doubt it does, indeed it seems dated. And Pippa Lee is hardly a usual character, even considering that she is supposed to have grown up in the late 70's. I have tho known a woman like this, actually from a generation earlier. She was a woman who wanted to please from the start, and it is hard to say whether the nymphomania she exhibited was the cause or the consequence of the obsessiveness that shut down her enjoyment of life. I do not think Miller has really grasped the psychology here and blaming it on all sorts of different things makes the script full of contradictory and extraneous material, even without some material that seems merely gratuitous, like the birth scene and the Doris Wishman reference. Wright plays the part well enough, but neither the look nor the hidden passion is there, but a lot of that is due to the script's inadequacies. Arkin almost seems unnecessary, is much too passive, and swallows half his lines. The children are both ugly and unconvincing and have no connection to the theme. Reeves is simply trite from head-to-toe. We are supposed to consider him like her, I guess, and presumably that is the reason his family was introduced. Bellucci is ridiculous and the ocean ablution banal, as well. The best acting was probably turned in by the "other woman," Winona Ryder, I guess, but her attempt at suicide also absurd and hackneyed. The best thing about this film is the way the transitions from past to present and present to past are handled, but large gaps in the timeline are left, which leaves one lost. Overall, this movie says to me less about the state of American home life, than it does about the state of the film industry. And once again, as so often is the case, this pointless movie seems to reflect the lifestyle and attitudes of Hollywood more than anything else. And, yes, that really is Cornell West in the opening scene.