Director: Ted Demme
Year Released: 1996
Rating: 2.5
Quite a mixed bag, really, of both truth and trite nonsense that it's really hard to make out where this picture stands: on one hand, most of the characters are locked in high school mode, unable to break free from those juvenile trappings (they sing in bars, butt heads, drink 'brew' and munch on chips), whereas on the other, there are some scenes that carry genuine emotion behind them, such as every single conversation Natalie Portman has with Timothy Hutton (it says little about American culture when a teenage girl is the smartest character in your movie). In fact, the Hutton-Portman connection is really the link that holds this together - without the quality of those scenes, this would have mentally tossed in the garbage bin with every other movie that has wall-to-wall conversations on relationships and sexual politics (at the end, everyone's still an emotional disaster, and it all comes across as a waste of time). Rosie O'Donnell is probably at her best here; I wanted to send the rest of the 'characters' to real therapy, not the coffee and eggs Psychology 101 pooh-poohing they opt for.
