Beautiful and Emotional, if a trifle contrived.

Rating: 9/10 (19 February 2002)

Ok, I absolutely adore this movie; it's one of my favourites, but there is one demeaning factor of this movie and is just that it is almost too perfect. That doesn't really make alot of sense to some people, and I have difficulty explaining much better than that, but once you see what I mean you'll agree with it. I think the best way to put it is that it's just trying a little too hard to be a 'great' film. Anywho, all that is DEFINATELY forgiven as this movie just does SO many right things in so many right ways. Oh, I should mention another problem people have with this movie, and that is that all the lead characters are physical attractive, and that makes it unrealistic. Well, I think the point of this casting choice was to show that even beautiful looking people are messed up on the inside and actually usually have more problems than the unatractive ones. This movie is beautiful to look at, and the cinematography Oscar was a shoe in (anybody notice how obssesed I am with cinematography?). Kevin Spacey's and Annette Benning's performances were both OUTSTANDING, and an implicit yet strong theme ran throughout the movie. This movie wasn't about Kevin Spacey being a pervert, Annette Benin being unfaithful, the blondie (can't rememer her name) being a slut or Ricky being a drug dealer. This movie was about all of the characters trying to find out what they wanted, and actually trying to do it! So many people told me they found this movie depressing but if that isn't a positive thing to take from a movie i don't know what is. We could all be a lot happier if we just did what we wanted in life, but of course we're all too self-conscious. In fact, right before the 'tragedy', every character is finally setting out to do what he/she has been wanting to do. Unfortunately one character's worries about how society will view him are too powerful and he destroy's the little tower of happiness. But the movie still manages to be uplifting in many ways, with a hugely positive message coming at the end that really changed the way I look at life.