When I first heard about this, I knew one day I’d get around to seeing it and I expected that when that day came, I’d probably really love it, but at the time, I wasn’t overly anxious to see it. It then seemed to completely disappear for a while, but then all of a sudden recently it started popping up in a lot of pretty respectable peoples’ Oscar predictions – not like just for its screenplay and minor things like that … as a serious contender for the big ones too. Big huh? from me.

The word overrated definitely comes to mind here. The last half hour almost reaches the heights I expected from all the rave reviews, and contains the movie’s only real laugh-out loud moment – well, scene – for me (which I won’t spoil by describing); but what leads up to it is nothing that hasn’t been seen before, and it’s far from sidesplitting comedy. Alan Arkin departs the movie far too early and the whole situation is actually fairly depressing. The movie has a great score/soundtrack, though. As far as f*cked-up family movies go (the word ‘dysfunctional’ doesn’t cover it anymore, lol), I’d rather see Pieces of April or Home for the Holidays.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 21st, 2006 at 7:15 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.