There is little in life sadder to see than a film that thinks it has a great deal to say of a revelatory or profound nature, but doesn't
Comment
09/19/07
Fierce People (2007)
26
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:43
Fresh:11
Rotten:32
Average Rating:4.7/10
Consensus: Fierce People's premise of a teenager studying rich people like animals is grating and self-satisfied, and Anton Yelchin's smug performance makes the film even harder to agree with.
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: A coming-of-age story about the perils of privilege, Lions Gate Films’ FIERCE PEOPLE examines the deceit and betrayal that erupts when a working-class mother and her son move to a wealthy “country... [More]
Starring: Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Donald Sutherland, Kristen Stewart
Director: Griffin Dunne
Reviews for Fierce People
Overplotting and a particularly ugly turn make this adaptation of Dirk Wittenborn's novel less a meditation on how the rich are different than a bland coming-of-age procedural.
09/20/07
After a promising start, Griffin Dunne's film bogs down and simply turns into a predictable mish-mash of a movie that is shrill and heavy-handed and totally trite.
09/21/07
Top CriticFierce People is no ordinary dud. This seedy soap opera is the most outlandish, campy romp through the mud since Showgirls.
09/20/07
The movie seems to want to play the social division card, but its better humanistic instincts undercut that ploy. It's enough to ruin Fierce People as an honest character drama, though.
09/14/07
With a screechingly affected voice (think Nicholson mixed with a sick Chihuahua), Yelchin is all tiring, syllable-pulling raw nerve here; a blinding pitch that holds the film back from needed dramatic expression.
01/30/08
A buoyant coming-of-age adventure welded to an amiable wealth fantasy.
09/21/07
Dunne weighs down a light social satire with a ponderous anthropological analogy.
05/22/06
Griffin Dunne and Dirk Wittenborn think they’re pretty clever.
09/15/07
Watching the idle rich toy with people can only go so far, then you want more depth and this doesn't have it.
10/12/07
throwing the film heedlessly into what was essentially a light social satire seems to border on the irresponsible
05/03/05
Fierce People is based on a forced premise: the idea that a family of super-rich New Jersey eccentrics is like a tribe to be studied anthropologically. None of the characters resembles any creature you'd discover in nature, however.
09/06/07
divine performances from Lane and Sutherland
04/19/08
The suffocating atmosphere of WASP-y snobbery has a morbid fascination, and the characters have enough flavorful eccentricity to hold one's interest.
09/06/07
...the movie's abrupt (and downright graceless) transformation from jaunty comedy to heavy-handed drama strips the proceedings of any momentum it may have had...
02/22/08
Quickly gets bogged down in Anton Yelchin's tendency to be whiny and annoying in his attempts to be clever or cute.
09/04/07
Too bad this wasn't made twenty-five years ago, when it still had a chance of being accepted by the masses because it was quirky.
09/07/07
While not as interesting a ride as advertised, the movie does keep one from falling asleep.
09/07/07
Miscalculated at every level, it's a vacant drama full of ineptly drawn characters.
10/10/07
The last act promises some very dark and primitive acts -- not that you should care.
09/07/07
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