Perfect Sisters may stand accused of being rife with tone-deaf stylistic choices, but the more positive spin is to call it a marginal film elevated, however inadvertently, by the strange specificity of its scenes.
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Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
Time OutJoshua Rothkopf
Perfect Sisters, which takes a dark, matricidal turn (inspired by an actual Toronto case), was never going to be a new "Heavenly Creatures." But give credit to director Stan Brooks for allowing his two former child stars some real meat to sink their teenage chops into.
Ms. Breslin and especially Ms. Henley are quite good, elevating a film that seems like an oft-told tale.
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Village Voice
Village Voice
Stanley M. Brooks's directorial debut's attempt to make sense of what happened falters by laboring to tick every item off the timeline checklist instead of focusing on who these Bathtub Girls were underneath the dysfunction.
The film is elevated by the quality of the performances, with Breslin and Henley movingly affecting as the closely bound sisters and Sorvino convincingly conveying her character’s inability to function.
The film owes whatever persuasiveness it has to the teen leads' sharp performances — their sisterly chemistry and their filial friction with an alcohol-addled mother, well played by Mira Sorvino.
Stan Brooks’ first directorial feature provides scant psychological depth, drawing its characters and staging their incidents in crude fashion, despite superficial production gloss.
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New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
This kind of thing requires a velvet touch, though director Stanley M. Brooks hits only hammer-heavy notes.