What a waste of talent!

Rating: 1/10 (25 March 2000)

Kevin Spacey and Chris Cooper are two of my favorite actors. What a disappointment to see them in this movie.
Take every cliche in the book: the middle-aged husband, unhappy with his empty marriage and his dead-end job; the wife, a frigid shrew (who, as painted by the numbers, used to be smiling and carefree) rediscovering her sexuality in another man's bed; the alienated teenage daughter; the homophobic military man (repressing his own homosexual urges, natch) and his emotionally and physically abused family. Add the stereotypical "beautiful" teenage girl, projecting confidence, but, alas, all too aware of her shallowness and mediocrity.
Mix them all together and, but for a few instances of laugh-out-loud humor, you have a movie that is almost painful to watch. Not because of the purported tragedy of their lives, but because there isn't one person you can care about in this roster of self-absorbed caricatures.