Self-Important Junk

Rating: 3/10 (13 November 2002)

If you are a Kevin Spacey fan, this movie is Nirvana. If you're a fan of good movies...look elsewhere. Wildly overpraised soap opera has Spacey's performance and Conrad Hall's stunning photography going for it and nothing--I mean NOTHING--else going for it. The wobbly script looks like it was cobbled together by people who never interacted with other humans and thought they were writing something original and fresh. Got news for you--this ain't fresh. In fact, this pretentious, self-important film is so smug that it telegraphs the ending and thinks the viewer is so stupid that they'll be "surprised". Astonishingly, this won 5 Academy Awards--but hey, John Wayne won one too, so that tells you how little merit the Academy holds. Looking for a movie about real human relationships? Skip this crud and see Robert Redford's far superior ORDINARY PEOPLE.