Come on people - WAKE UP already!! It's no good!!!

Rating: 2/10 (18 February 2000)

Dreamworks did one hell of a job rolling out the red carpet for this bloated, self-important saga, making everyone feel it was the "movie to see" this fall. Well, I don't mind blatant promotion if it points me toward something worthwhile, but this was such a stinker that I walked out in the middle of it (and I NEVER walk out on movies!). I later heard the details of the ending from a friend and could only be doubly grateful that I walked out when I did.
The acting is uniformly hollow and grating. I squirmed in embarrassment for Annette Bening, a fine actress forced to embody one of the shrillest and most blatantly misogynistic caricatures of womanhood/motherhood ever put on the screen. Thora Birch as the daughter is evidently the most recent graduate of the Winona Ryder "sneering and sulking as a form of character delineation" school of acting. But even she looks like a Meryl Streep next to Mena Suvari as the teenage Lolita of the piece, who is so boring and unappealing that the notion of anyone falling in love with her is absurd. Wes Bentley as the kid next door is just plain weird, like an outcast from a David Lynch movie - which wouldn't be so bad except that we're supposed to take him seriously. Chris Cooper as his militaristic and overbearing father does his best with the role, but it's every bit as obvious (and odious) a caricature as Bening's.
The only actor who comes out looking even halfway decent is Kevin Spacey - not because he's so wonderful, but simply because he has the good sense to underplay his part and search for the laughs wherever he can find them. Indeed, when he's being drolly amusing, the movie is passably entertaining (like in the scene where he tells off his boss, or when he applies for work at a fast-food restaurant). But he gets zero support from the rest of the cast, and so even his talents are wasted, as there's just no one believable for him to play off of. And even his humor is wasted, since the film, instead of being a black comedy (which might - emphasize MIGHT - have worked), so wants to be taken seriously as an Important Statement. But since everything in it is either a cliché or a stereotype, how can it be taken seriously?
And it's so derivative! It's like the producers said, "Ok, let's cross The Ice Storm with Lolita and The Truman Show, throw in bits and pieces from Fearless and War of the Roses, some of the feel of The Graduate, and give the whole thing a look straight out of Blue Velvet." It's ridiculous! Every situation and idea in here has been done far better somewhere else - heck, any run of the mill made for TV family crisis melodrama is better than this schlock. I can't emphasize this enough: THIS MOVIE IS TERRIBLE! An insult to all mature, thinking and feeling people.
What's WRONG with all of you out there?! Snap out of it! Seeing the reception this film has been getting, I feel like I'm in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I'm the last one who has not been taken over by the pods. And you know what? It's starting to get lonely.