Strong performances by the principals salvaged this one for me. Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, in what I believe to be her best performance yet in a feature film, and Haley Joel Osment, who demonstrates that his work in The Sixth Sense was no fluke.
I prefer off-beat scripts, and this one was about as on-beat as it gets, having the heavy, regular, thud of a bass drum. No button was left unpushed, no easy expectation unfulfilled, no heartstring untugged. The ending sequence was absolutely putrid and uncalled for. There had to be a better way to end the story. Even a rain of frogs would have been better. But I won't get into that, wanting to avoid spoilers.
I won't say it was a bad story. The concept was great, and the film's heart was in the right place, even if its head was up where only a script doctor would dare to probe.
All said, I recommend it.
I prefer off-beat scripts, and this one was about as on-beat as it gets, having the heavy, regular, thud of a bass drum. No button was left unpushed, no easy expectation unfulfilled, no heartstring untugged. The ending sequence was absolutely putrid and uncalled for. There had to be a better way to end the story. Even a rain of frogs would have been better. But I won't get into that, wanting to avoid spoilers.
I won't say it was a bad story. The concept was great, and the film's heart was in the right place, even if its head was up where only a script doctor would dare to probe.
All said, I recommend it.