Especially forceful performances make it well worth watching, even if it becomes a bit too much at times.
Imaginary Heroes (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:101
Fresh:35
Rotten:66
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: Imaginary Heroes is a muddled, melodramatic and unconvincing drama.
Runtime: 1 hr 57 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: This realistic family film starring Sigourney Weaver and Emile Hirsch as a loving mother and son asks some deep questions about mortality, the risks of depression, and staying together verses... This realistic family film starring Sigourney Weaver and Emile Hirsch as a loving mother and son asks some deep questions about mortality, the risks of depression, and staying together verses splitting up. Living in a beautiful house in a manicured suburban neighborhood, the Travis family seems flawless at first glance. That is, until the handsome eldest son (Kip Pardue), a star swimmer, commits suicide, leaving the family in pieces. The father (Jeff Daniels), rejects the other members of the family, becoming distant and aloof. The college-student daughter (Michelle Williams), rarely visits home any more. The mother (Weaver), resorts to petty quibbles with her next-door neighbor (Deirdre O'Connell), and develops a minor--but highly amusing--marijuana habit. And the youngest son, Tim (Hirsch)--who is the protagonist and the real victim in the story--searches for meaning, identity, and solace from the chaos that surrounds him. Tim's best friend Kyle (Ryan Donowho) experiments with drugs and sex, providing for some understated and poignant coming-of-age situations. But for the most part, it is the chemistry between expert actors Weaver and Hirsch that carries the film, making IMAGINARY HEROES a lovely, sensitive meditation on the mid-life family crisis. [More]
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Emile Hirsch, Jeff Daniels, Deirdre O'Connell
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Emile Hirsch, Jeff Daniels, Deirdre O'Connell, Kip Pardue, Ryan Donowho, Michelle Williams, Suzanne Santo
Director: Daniel Harris
Director: Daniel Harris
Screenwriter: Daniel Harris
Producer: Illana Diamant, Gina Resnick, Art Linson, Denise Shaw
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for Imaginary Heroes
It’s unusual and faintly disturbing to see Jeff Daniels play such an unlikeable character.
Tired dysfunctional family drama that speaks to grief and denial in unwieldy doses.
The questions are more interesting before Harris answers them in all-too- neat explanations that come off as a cheap, painless way to solve problems with much deeper roots.
Sigourney Weaver gives a terrific performance in this impressive film.
If the film had been about Weaver rather than her family, Harris might have scripted an ending that represented a risky individual choice instead of a communal retreat.
Hirsch is dead-on with his weary deadpan in the face of high school torment, sexual confusion and parental absurdity.
Plays like Ordinary People rewritten by someone too young to imitate that film's powerful complications.
Somebody slipped Hollywood a dysfunctional-family pill this year. This one requires a degree of patience and a taste for the low-key. In other words, it's for the art house.
A hard-hitting drama about the sharp edges of grief and the need for families to nurture openness and love in the midst of tragedies that test their mettle.
Weaver dominates the proceedings, bringing such intelligence, energy, and complexity to the role that it should be a crime she hasn’t received but a whisper of Oscar buzz.
Harris directs at a funereal pace that snuffs out his script's own wit, and only Weaver keeps the bitter laughs coming.
Comes across as patently false...are there really any suburbs in America like this one, with its family’s cute, tragicomic disintegration in the wake of a son’s suicide?
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