She's So Lovely
She's So Lovely
R | 29 August 1997 (USA)
She's So Lovely Trailers

After being released from a psychiatric institution, a man tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his now-ex wife from the events that led up to his incarceration.

Reviews
Interesteg What makes it different from others?
Dotbankey A lot of fun.
Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
reiglejim Some people have a hard time getting through their lives. For multitudinous reasons.This film portrays a very touching and passionate marriage between two pretty unhinged people. Played by great actors, Robin Wright and Sean Penn, who also became spouses, in real life. And the chemistry shows, in a way that romance chemistry rarely does in Hollywood films, sad to say.Then there are the terrific actors James Gandolfini, Harry Dean Stanton, Gena Rowlands, and the charming daughters, etc.And John Travolta actually upped his game for this. He was terrific in a difficult role.Screenplay written by the late great John Cassavetes, and directed well by his son, Nick Cassavetes.I found it to be a bit sentimental, but moving
SnoopyStyle Maureen (Robin Wright) is a mess. She's pregnant and desperate to find her husband Eddie Quinn (Sean Penn). Her neighbor Kiefer (James Gandolfini) comforts her and then violently rapes her. Eddie takes it badly and attacks somebody landing him in a psychiatric hospital. He is released 10 years later although he keeps thinking it's only 3 months. Maureen had divorced him and remarried to Joey Germoni (John Travolta) with three kids. The oldest girl Jeanie is Eddie's.These are not sweet people. They are all a mess in the first part. The first part has great grimy gutter feel. Robin Wright brings so much to her character. Everybody does great performances. The second half is grasping a bit. It would be helpful to show where Joey is coming from. I think it's more dramatic to have Joey be normal but it's still compelling to have Travolta act a bit crazy.
eran_aviad I didn't know what to expect of this movie, being a John Cassavetes fan. it was very surprising to find that this is in fact a tribute to Cassavetes Sr. Sean Penn is brilliant and actually seemed to be acting it the way John would have. same goes for Robin Wright, who seems to be acting Gena Rowlands style.all in all i think this is a must see for John Cassvetes fans who crave too see what he would have done next, if he had the chance. this film has a lot of heart, and Cassavetes Sr. fingerprints all over it.thanks to Nick for this loving tribute to his father. a very underrated film.
bob the moo Maureen is a bit strung out and pregnant from her low-life husband Eddie. Their lives are an unpredictable mix of actions that mostly involve drinking and scamming round on the fringe of society. When Eddie is "away" for a few days, Marueen falls in drinking with neighbour Kiefer, who tries to rape her but then just beats her. She explains this away to Eddie so as to keep him from going crazy at her or anyone else but when he does start to flip she calls the paramedics to take him into care for his own safety. However when he shoots one of them, Eddie is sentenced to a mental institution. When he comes out he finds that Maureen has divorced him and has moved onto a much more stable and reliable man in the form of Joey, with whom she has had more children.Almost halfway in it becomes evident that this film isn't going to work out that well because, before the "10 years later" jump, the love between the two leads hasn't been established to a convincing degree. Given that the narrative is using this mutual attraction (despite all the negatives) as its lynchpin this is a bit of a problem. Other than establishing that both are unstable and using each other for meaning, the film doesn't do that much for all the time it takes up. The second half isn't that much better as Eddie comes out as a sort of watered down Rainman and disrupts Maureen's new relationship with Joey. The script then asks us to swallow that she still loves Eddie to the point where the mere news that he is released sees her flush the last ten years down the toilet.I can sort of understand what the script was trying to do but it didn't manage to produce anything interest in the aggressive relationships that it paints in the gutter. The characters are where the main failing is. Maureen's character is poorly defined and Wright-Penn doesn't appear to understand what motivates her character and thus turns in a really mixed performance that pushes emotional buttons in each scene but is never consistent. Eddie is OK in the first half of the film as he just seems like a drunk unstable loser but in the second half he is unconvincingly soft. Likewise Penn is strong in the first half but he is unconvincing in the second. Their performances aren't helped by a weird mix of tones – at times a dark love story, at other times a cringingly awful "comedy" complete with "jaunty" music being played over a fight on the front lawn or that horrible scene at Joey's bar. Travolta is a bit better and Stanton is a reasonably nice addition in a small role.Overall this is a shocking mess of a film that spirals downhill from the mid-point onwards. The first half shows potential but doesn't manage to pull off the formative stages of the central relationship and thus fails to set up the second half. However the second half isn't helped by poor development and a terrible mishmash of "comic" moments that simply feel crass and out of place – I suspect even if the first half had been a stormer, this second half would have been poor enough to drag it all under. Even the acting talent seems all at sea and unsure of where they stand or who they are. A load of rubbish with little or no value.