Too self-important for its own good - but it's good anyway

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2000)

I hesitate to add another comment for this movie (over 1000), but I'd like to remember the way I'm feeling right now.
This is a good movie, worth the time watching it, but be prepared to be manipulated and maneuvered around by a story that reaches further than it can grasp. Director Mendes tries to make it all seem very very (very) important, but it's still just a melodrama. At its best it's a version of the Hemingway short story "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber"; at its worst, it's an episode of any soap opera. I can't understand how the screenplay won an award - wait, yes I can.
God, but the whole thing is so aware of its own importance ("what you're watching is CINEMA, you stupid viewer"); it's so self-aggrandizing it makes me want to puke. I wish it didn't have this attitude because Kevin Spacey is as good as he's ever been and Annette Bening is acting her butt off. I wish a lot of things - like this film should have had the guts to admit the story was really about Ricky, the more interesting storyline; like it should have spent a little less time on the superfluous dream sequences, and a little more time on the development of the abundance of two-dimensional characters; and I wish we would have been able to see the REAL reason Lester had "changed" - it's not because of cheerleaders - and somewhere, someone involved with this film knows it. But has yet to let us in on it.
If you've read this far, you may be surprised to learn that I gave this movie an 8. Sometimes acting only takes you so far, but in this case it was the whole thing - the cast is so incredibly impressive that it's worth watching.