Genre: Dramas
Starring: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Two fine performances, a subject close to all our hearts and a screenplay that manages to be both brilliantly witty and almost unbearably poignant add up to the best family comedy-drama since Little Miss Sunshine.
The pleasures are small but intense and the spell cast in one of the most surprisingly moving films of the year is captivating.
Jenkins’s solemn comedy may be 389 jokes short of a Woody Allen classic, but there is a tenderness about these flawed heroes that is profoundly touching.
Top Critic A powerful, incisive, often very funny look at aging, ailing family dynamics, superbly acted by two of the best in the business.
Top Critic A richly nuanced American comedy, with two acting talents working at their absolute peak.
Top Critic It's just a shame the script doesn't push the humour further; brief, amusing put-downs aren't quite enough to make this a bonafide comedy. But if you're looking for a well-performed drama about dementia, you've got it.
Top Critic Emotionally engaging, sharply written and superbly directed drama with terrific performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.
Linney and Hoffman deliver two more creatively textured performances in this story about the strain and comfort of family relationships.
Hoffman and Linney are wonderful -- underplaying so perfectly that crumpled, bittersweet truths continue to surface.
Top Critic While writer-director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) lets things get a little mushy towards the end, the film brilliantly portrays a difficult family moment made even more complicated by her characters' overweening narcissism.
The Savages proves there's a rich vein of humor to be mined from the darkest of themes.
Hoffman and Linney bring a credible blend of ease and exasperation to the sibling relations, which show concern and competition in roughly equal measure. [DVD]
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Top Critic There really doesn't seem to be much of a bright side about a brother and sister who are faced with putting their father in a nursing home, but Jenkins manages to mine humor and heart out of the bleak circumstances.
Call me hokey if you want. I just would have liked more heart in there somewhere. But the acting is superb and it's worth seeing just for that. By no means watch this over the holidays but pursue its scholarly merit on safe ground.
Most of all about recovering, about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and plugging on. It also just happens to be, in its small, astutely observed, delicately bittersweet way, one of the best films of the year.
It's billed as a comedy. You may or may not find much to laugh at.
Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.
There are resonant moments of elderly vulnerability and strong acting from Hoffman and Bosco, but Linney's overly familiar exasperated-woman performance and Jenkins' been-there, done-that-better story sink "The Savages.
Screenwriter/director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) is smart enough not to try to redeem any of these people — at least not in the traditional, cinematic sense.
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