Excellent film with occasional digression into SNL skit

Rating: Null/10 (30 July 2011)

The film is excellent, overall, in creating interest in the lives of its main characters. Even though I am far from being a boxing fan, and the fight scenes were repugnant, I was interested in finding out how things would turn out, and I credit excellent story-writing and acting by the two main leads. Mark Wahlberg has, elsewhere, been criticized for being bland in the role but his restraint made me think of the saying "less is more." The only criticism, and this is frankly a significant one - which caused me to rate the film lower than I might have - is that it occasionally turned into an SNL skit, i.e. cartoonish caricatures were occasionally injected into an otherwise serious drama. When all the sisters and the mother were together, I kept thinking of the SNL skit "Bronx Beat" in which Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph pretend to be extremely vulgar Bronx women - rather poorly, I might add (although that is another review.:)) The film's portrayal of these "blue collar" Massachusetts women, as vulgar, ugly, and stupid, was a cheap caricature; it kept bringing it down to the level of an SNL skit and it was out of place in this serious drama. I would nevertheless recommend the film, but it loses points in my estimation due to these intrusions.