ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Pluskylang Great Film overall

BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

RavenGlamDVDCollector A good movie if you carry a torch for Liv Tyler is STEALING BEAUTY. Of course that is the one that kick-started my 'affair' with her. There is also EMPIRE RECORDS, that one comes highly recommended by myself. Armageddon, yeah. But stick to those. I signed up for this movie in the name of Liv Tyler. Figured, yeah, well, there's Jennifer Connelly as well, but she's been around a long time, my focus was on Liv. Unfortunately, Liv is (well, I'm not gonna say it quite up front - suffice to say, still with a beautiful face, the cheekbone structure and the eyes, but...)Jennifer Connelly came to my attention ages ago in THE HOT SPOT, and I saw it when it was still fairly new on the video circuit. Made me take a look at THE ROCKETEER as well, though I can't remember that one... It was decades ago. As for THE HOT SPOT, that movie seems disregarded now, it was small, I suppose, but a lot better than this one.This thing however... Checked out in my research as a boring drama with nothing special to it. Then, listed by a user here on IMDb as one of his favorite hot movies, as a fellow-perve, another girl-watcher, spoke up, I took the leap, and went for it.It is not bad. But it is not good either. It has a boring pace. I don't wanna watch from the dorky boy's viewpoint, a guy who would paint sideburns on his face to be cool SAYS IT FREAKING ALL, how dumb-ass dial-tone can you get?And Liv has gotten big. There, I said it after all. Dammit, sob, wail, pretty things go to pot so soon...Fortunately, Hollywood seems to have agreed with Ms. Connelly. Seven years after THE HOT SPOT, she has regained much of her girlish charm. Good genes, really good genes. There is that face, that way she carries herself, that whole air around her that says "fun, fun, fun"... I have been considering another movie on that guy's list, CAREER OPPORTUNITIES. He did steer me in the right direction with EMPIRE RECORDS after all...I would not call this one a hot movie. It is too boring most of the time. It is plain, and that is its problem. It has no zing. The trailer showed me that clearly. And on the board, there were negative comments posted about Liv. But I had to see for myself. I'd have kicked myself right now. But Jennifer darling saved the movie from being a waste of time and effort for me. My score, however, gives it the full broadside it deserves. For it could and should have been something much better. Even though Liv is center-stage on the box cover, it focuses on the guys, who are just not interesting. Ugh!

blanche-2 Pat O'Connor's film, Inventing the Abbotts, from 1997, shows us teen life in the '50s, but not the teen life of Rebel Without a Cause or Blackboard Jungle. Instead, it's the story of a lower middle class family, the Holts, which consists of a single mom (Kathy Baker) and her two sons, Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) and Jacey (Billy Crudup) and the wealthiest family in their Illinois town, the Abbotts, consisting of Lloyd Abbott, his wife, and three beautiful daughters (Jennifer Connolly, Joanna Going, and Liv Tyler). Talk about well-cast; the two brothers could definitely be brothers and the three women could definitely be sisters.The Abbotts are connected to the Holts by an incident that occurred before Doug was born, which was shortly after his father was killed in an accident. Jacey is particularly obsessed with the family, especially Eleanor (Connelly), the "bad" Abbott daughter. And he really feels that the family owes him something. Doug, meanwhile, has an on and off relationship with Pam (Tyler).The two young men learn about life, loss, and letting go. Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic as the sensitive and romantic Doug; while Jacey provides us with the sex, Doug gives us the romance. Billy Crudup is excellent as his troubled brother, reaching obsessively for what he thinks he has to have. As their mother, Kathy Baker gives a lovely performance, every note right, as she always does."Inventing the Abbotts" has a quiet beauty about it, along with the heartache, anger, and raw emotion that the teen years always bring. Highly recommended. Don't look for anything to explode or huge action scenes; you won't find them here.

preppy-3 This takes place in Illinois from 1957 to 1960. It's about two poor brothers--Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) and Jacey (Billy Crudup)--who are infatuated with three rich sisters--Alice (Joanna Going), Eleanor (Jennifer Connrlly) and Pamela (Liv Tyler) Abbott. It follows their relationships over the years.Why this film was made remains a mystery to me. It's very well-done with an attractive cast and beautiful settings--but there's nothing even remotely new here. The conflicts and story lines here have been done countless times before (just here they're updated with minor nudity and some very R rated language). Also, at almost two hours, it's far too long. I was basically pretty bored during the last hour and was just patiently waiting for things to reach their utterly predictable conclusion. Also the acting by Connelly and Crudup was pretty terrible. Connelly just giggles and acts vacant and Crudup seems unwilling to move one muscle in his face. He always has this blank expression on his face no matter what's happening in his scenes. The great acting by the rest of the cast (especially Phoenix and Kathy Baker) and the lush settings make this worth watching at least once. But seriously--you've seen this all before. Narrated by an unbilled Michael Keaton. I give it a 6.

max von meyerling There was a time when films made for women, the so-called "Women's picture", were also entertaining and involving for a wider audience to enjoy. Now they are an exclusively female designed, designated, manufactured and sold product. The "chick flick" of today. There's got to be more than just endless variations on "who's going with whom". The same giggly obsession of 8-year-old girls in the schoolyard matching up their schoolmates. It reminds me of an analogy with duplicate bridge where the same characters and elements can be played a different way each time and still lead to an arbitrary predetermined ending. Maybe there's a better analogy.When I was a kid the Saturday matinée had one feature left over from the 30s, which was a slapstick race. (The concept was later taken by Hanna –Barbera and turned into "Wacky Racers.) Tickets with numbers were distributed at the box office before the film. Those with the "winning number" would get a prize. It would be the same race every week except for the tacked on last shot in which the number of that weeks "winner" would be announced, which, I feel now, probably coincided with the number least in distribution. The girl with the final embrace seems more determined by whom the talents agencies thought was the better bet to become a money-spinning super-star. It was, as they say in the wrestling industry, a worked result.Yeah, it's worse than soap opera if you think about it. It's just whose going with whom to the total exclusion of the outside world. At least soaps have some stupid plots weaving in and out of the who is with whom. Nothing anyone does, thinks or says has anything to do with engaging the big world at large. There is no context beyond the period setting, here 1957. Wonderful shinny collector's cars (too bad they sound wrong. A '57 T-Bird did not growl like a sports car. It was a big fat V-8 hooked up to a spongy automatic transmission.) Men's clothes are wrong, the hair is wrong, the buses are wrong, as is the whole demeanor of small town folks at the time. Guys, even a-holes, didn't say the f words quite so openly but its used here to emphasize the hurt one woman feels.Hugh Heffner was from a small town in Illinois and when he began Playboy he supplied the whole script for teen-age guys to use in order to get laid. It just wasn't a question of natural and irresistible attraction but men had to go through a whole pseudo- intellectual song and dance to get even some stink on their finger. The phrases "contemporary mores" and "mature adults" were used a lot. People act and talk like 1997, not 1957. Did I hear one brother call the other "dude"?As for what passes for conflict the poor, "working class" boys from the other side of the tracks live as well as M-G-M poverty in the good old days. Actually schoolteachers are considered middle class. They live in a swell house with perfect wood details and well- painted walls. The people who lived on the other side of the tracks were either colored or poor white trash. This concocted conflict has to be folded in to give the bland drama a little bit of spice. Even the environment is flattened out to be uniformly pleasant and unremarkable. Its always-fair weather, none of those sweaty 100-degree summers or winters with snow up to one's nipples. Anyway the retro-design element is shoved out of the way after the first half-hour and the somewhat baffling mating dance takes center stage and the five are whittled down to the inevitable two. And they live happily ever after and had two children, both girls. The End. What was the film about? Harry Cohn used to lay out this kind of plot in the most salacious terms. Yeah, it gets down to that. Permutations and stops and starts between various Holts and Abbotts. Relationships equal couplings equal voyeurism and we're back at cinema's ground zero – watching other people "do it". It's just that certain males get off watching porn and certain women get off on "relationships".Then there's the music, typical for this type of picture - insipid. Synthetic noodelings on an electric piano for two scenes, deep swelling amorphous strings for transitions and actual movement. There's some not quite correct period music and a tribute to the Elvis hit of the era- Love Me Tender, but this is soon submerged under the overwhelming need of shuffling the brothers and sisters around. Like everything else in the picture – nothing to distract you from the issue always at hand- whose getting with whom.I'm not saying there's not an audience for this. Some of the comments on the IMDb were from people emotionally effected by INVENTING THE ABBOTTS. There was just enough information to engage their imaginations, erotic or otherwise, the hell with the world or 1957 or anything else. I'm sure the manufacturers of this film knew exactly who their audience was and manipulated the film specifically for them. It's just that women's films don't have to be one-dimensional panderings. They can tell their stories against a real world with real people or at least set against a backdrop of some import. It's got to be about something more than just who's going with whom.