Overrated!

Rating: 1/10 (14 September 2005)

I literally love every one of the actors featured in this film and desperately wanted to love this movie however:
From start to finish this film was heavy handed, forced, leading, pretentious, self important, overly sentimental and at times downright corny.
There was too much dialog (show me don't tell me please), and the lines were way to preachy. Each scene was full of forced speeches (instead of natural interchanges and situations) where all the actors screamed and shouted and practically beat you over the head trying to make the directors point (I could almost hear the keys of the his trusty typewriter as I watched this film). It was ridiculous.
Scenes ran on way too long.
I did not care about or connect with any of the characters as none of them were developed. These fine actors were instead used as puppets. Pawns moved around a board at the directors whim to fit into a fake story which relies way too heavily on coincidence to even pass as one.
There were loose ends, and when there was an attempt to bring one of the situations to a conclusion the scenario was so off-the-wall and out of the clear blue it bordered on absurdity.
This director just needed too many things to happen in order to piece this poor excuse for a story together, (and by-god he was going to make those things happen if it killed him), so instead of a nice natural feel and flow (which it paramount to ANY great film) it just felt desperate, overwrought, forced and fake. I mean this guy really whittled those square pegs and there were lots of them.
I submit that if that if a story has to rely that heavily on coincidence, big speeches and over the top situations it's not a story at all but a soapbox for the director to tap dance on top of and that's not what I pay good money to see in a theater.
This is what happens when a director gets caught up trying to make a big-time social statement instead of using the silver screen for the purpose intended: To tell a magnificent story (no matter what the genre) with wonderfully multi-dimensional characters that the audience, good or bad, will connect with. To weave the moral, if you will, invisibly, flawlessly into the story and leave the weight of said moral for each audience member to determine for themselves.
This film is a ruse and a cheat and I'm amazed that so many liked it.
I'll stop now. This comment has taken enough time from my life I can never get back and I already lost two hours on the film itself.