Harris' dreary, pill-popping suburbia is only a few blocks from Peyton Place.
Comment
03/08/05
Imaginary Heroes (2004)
35
%
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... [More]
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Emile Hirsch, Jeff Daniels, Deirdre O'Connell
Director: Daniel Harris
Reviews for Imaginary Heroes
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03/06/05
With an eager urgency full of risk, [director] Harris piles on emotional layers and keeps winking back-stories at us.
03/04/05
It's the kind of movie that's not meant to be seen by suburbanites. It's an arthouse special, trading in the kind of petrified caricatures that never seem to weary downtown audiences.
03/04/05
Imagine Ordinary People with half its IQ deducted.
03/04/05
Imaginary Heroes may not show the directorial confidence of Zach Braff's remarkable Garden State or the emotional depth of A Home at the End of the World, but it's a strong character-driven story all the same.
03/04/05
Writer-director Dan Harris piles so many problems on top of a suburban family here that eventually both problems and characters lose impact and believability.
03/04/05
Imaginary Heroes mines the suburban tragedy of Ordinary People, The Ice Storm and American Beauty, but with only a quarter of the insight.
03/04/05
The gift of Imaginary Heroes is getting to know these anything- but-ordinary people.
03/03/05
Harris' potential appears vast, and he's already succeeding in attracting strong casts to his scripts. It will be interesting to see what a few years' more maturity and experience allow him to create.
03/03/05
Tired dysfunctional family drama that speaks to grief and denial in unwieldy doses.
03/01/05
Weaver, Daniels and Hirsch do the best they can with a script that makes its point quickly and then leaves them all flailing about for something -– resolution, meaning, anything –- to make their torture, and ours, worth the while.
02/26/05
Whatever kudos go to Harris for the length of his reach tend to be overshadowed by inexperience and enslavement to genre.
02/25/05
Enlivened by some good performances, but it's ultimately overfamiliar and slow, and its characters feel like they were dreamed up by a screenwriter -- no one ever seems to breathe real air.
02/25/05
What saves Imaginary Heroes is its essential truthfulness about families, which it reveals, not only in the broad movements of its story but in the small details.
02/25/05
A depressing yarn.
02/25/05
Harris has made a movie that's not entirely credible. And at times, it seems as if he's doing emotional heavy lifting for which he hasn't properly trained.
02/25/05
Plays like Ordinary People rewritten by someone too young to imitate that film's powerful complications.
02/25/05
This is bad first novel material, derivative and lightweight.
02/25/05
What remains when the movie is over is the memory of Sandy and Tim talking, and of a mother who loves her son, understands him, and understands herself in a wry but realistic way.
02/25/05
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