This script seems like a condensed-books version of a story that probably makes more sense in print form.
A Home at the End of the World (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:109
Fresh:53
Rotten:56
Average Rating:5.7/10
Runtime: 1 hr 33 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Bobby and Jonathan have been inseparable since they were teenagers in suburban Ohio. Bobby has suffered many losses for someone so young, and is starved for love and affection. Awkward teen... Bobby and Jonathan have been inseparable since they were teenagers in suburban Ohio. Bobby has suffered many losses for someone so young, and is starved for love and affection. Awkward teen Jonathan has a nice family, and a particularly wonderful mother (Sissy Spacek). The boys not only become as close as brothers, but they also experiment sexually. The two lose touch, but find each other again in their mid-20s in the early 1980s, when Bobby (Colin Farrell) moves to New York and joins Jonathan (Dallas Roberts) at the apartment he shares with Clare (Robin Wright Penn), an aging hippie. Bobby and Clare become lovers, however, Clare had planned to have a child with Jonathan, who is now openly gay and who is still interested in Bobby, and to whom Clare used to be attracted. The trio becomes its own unique entity, questioning the traditional definitions of family and love, and dealing with the complications of their love triangle. Based on the novel of the same name by Michael Cunningham, who also wrote the screenplay and who was the recipient of the Pulitzer prize, this film marks the debut of director Michael Mayer. Erik Smith plays Bobby as a teenager, and Harris Allen plays the teenage Jonathan. [More]
Starring: Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek
Starring: Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek
Director: Michael Mayer
Director: Michael Mayer
Screenwriter: Michael Cunningham
Producer: Tom Hulce, John Hart, Pamela Koffler, Hunt Lowry, Katie Roumel, Jeff Sharp, Christine Vachon, John Wells
Composer: Duncan Sheik
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for A Home at the End of the World
Casting is everything in a film like this, and in the major roles, Mayer scores two out of three.
The film equivalent of the blind date described as 'really nice.' It's neither bad nor good, just sort of earnest and well-meaning.
By the end of the film, you may get the sense that these are good actors still in search of good, fully formed characters.
The only thing to look forward to in At Home at the End of the World is The End
Although the actors do a magnificent job with the piffle, the characters hardly ever act the way real people do in the situations they are presented with. They act, instead, the way characters in a movie act.
A narrative-heavy but performance- driven work that rarely achieves the poetry of the longing that it explores.
Wonderful performances, dead-on casting and a touching story make up for the shortfalls of a condensed and awkward script.
A sprightly but shallow tale of a defiantly untraditional family...but the pleasures of the picture largely make up for the affectation.
What keeps the movie going, far longer than the screenplay deserves, are fine performances all around.
An adaptation of another Cunningham book that, like The Hours, comes with its own set of challenges, which director Michael Mayer handles forthrightly, with precise emotional pitch.
Sincere, heartfelt and mostly hopeless, A Home At The End Of The World is a well-intentioned wetnap of a movie about the re-configured post-nuclear family.
Never less than watchable and often quite moving, especially when Colin Farrell (as Bobby) or Sissy Spacek (Alice) are on screen.
This debacle takes Farrell, one of the screen's most charismatic young stars, and systematically drains him of the wary intelligence, Irish wit and wired energy that make him interesting.
Doesn't quite satisfy -- it all seems too simple, too glowing -- but it tries, and that's something. Not quite enough, but something.
Roberts, Farrell, and Penn don't appear to be in the least bit self-consumed; you really believe they're thinking about each other.
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