BEFORE: Diane Keaton carries over from "The Big Wedding", for a film that was on the schedule for a long time to screen on Valentine's Day itself, due to the presence of the word "Heart" in the title. But I shouldn't program by title, that causes too many problems. Look, I've got four films this month with the word "wedding" in the title - starting with "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", and two more to come. But they're very different films, and didn't share any actors, so they've been separated, and rightfully so.
THE PLOT: Three sisters with quite different personalities and lives reunite when the youngest of them, Babe, has just shot her husband.
AFTER: I'm scratching my head after watching this one, because I just don't get it. It's based on a play, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning play no less, and I guess it's just one of those things that works on a stage (very talkie-talkie) but under no circumstances should have been made into a film. I think back to plays like "A Doll's House" or "The Glass Menagerie" and how they were very introspective, darkish dramas about women who were lonely or shut-ins or who just don't feel like going outside today. That may kill on a stage set, where all of the action is designed to take place in one room, but it absolutely sucks in a movie. Movies need to be big, bold, things where we can travel to Paris or Oz or outer space and exciting things happen.
(Maybe I've just seen too many introspective romance films in a row. I'm really longing to watch some sci-fi, or even just an action film...)
I'm not going to say NOTHING happens in this film, but darn if it doesn't feel like it. OK, so the sisters reunite (ho hum) and one has shot her husband the day before (we eventually get to see it in flashback, but still...) and we eventually learn the romantic histories of all three sisters. I'm at least glad there's some romance in the film, justifying its inclusion in the February chain, but it's another case where everyone's love life is screwed-up, just in different ways.
One sister had an affair, the second starts seeing a married man, and the third is the spinster-y type, who eventually gets herself to a place where she's ready to take a chance and start dating. Unless I missed something, that's about it. The drama over the shooting of the husband, the WHY of that, is mildly interesting, but it's nothing we haven't seen before in other stories about meat-headed bigoted Southern husbands.
Pointless, pointless, pointless - it just doesn't GO anywhere, and a movie is supposed to go somewhere.
Also starring Sissy Spacek (last seen in "Coal Miner's Daughter"), Jessica Lange (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Sam Shepard (last seen in "August: Osage County"), Tess Harper, Hurd Hatfield.
RATING: 3 out of 10 birthday candles
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