A low-key entertaining comedy about four couples who fear losing their partners to others.
The Simian Line (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:18
Fresh:3
Rotten:15
Average Rating:4/10
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: A fortuneteller predicts a break up for one of three couples at a New Jersey Halloween party. Harry Connick, Jr. and Lynn Redgrave star as May-December lovers who host a party for their tenants and... A fortuneteller predicts a break up for one of three couples at a New Jersey Halloween party. Harry Connick, Jr. and Lynn Redgrave star as May-December lovers who host a party for their tenants and neighbors. Monica Keena and Dylan Bruno are their upstairs renters, struggling young punk musicians. Cindy Crawford and Jamey Sheridan are the couple next door, whose ambitious dreams of life--across the river--in New York City threaten to destroy their relationship. Two ghosts (William Hurt and Samantha Mathis) haunt the couples while slowly forming their own unique friendship. Eccentric fortuneteller and palm reader (Tyne Daly) is the only person who can see and hear the ghosts. She reads in Redgrave's palm the unique "simian line," a horizontal fold crossing the palm, which knits the heart and head lines into one. Writer-director Linda Yellen shot the film on location in Weehawken, a picturesque New Jersey town on the Hudson River in the shadow of New York City. The stellar cast is led expertly by Redgrave whose portrayal of a mature woman in love with a much younger man is complex and multi-layered. Talk Show host Montel Williams is executive producer of the film. [More]
Starring: Harry Connick, Cindy Crawford, Lynn Redgrave, Tyne Daly
Starring: Harry Connick, Cindy Crawford, Lynn Redgrave, Tyne Daly, Jamey Sheridan, William Hurt, Samantha Mathis, Eric Stoltz
Director: Linda Yellen
Director: Linda Yellen
Screenwriter: Gisela Bernice, Linda Yellen
Producer: Linda Yellen
Composer: Patrick Seymour
Studio: Gabriel Film Group
Reviews for The Simian Line
Reveals [Yellen's] mastery of artifice and theatricality in the service of eliciting genuine emotion and insight into human nature.
We grownups need more of this kind of silly, sweet, knowing romantic movie.
It's partly the characters and partly the performers who are responsible for generating more feelings in the afterlife than the film's Weehawken Six achieve in here and now.
You might think Weehawken is the epitome of dorkdom after the chimpanzee-less Line makes you choke on its old-fashioned, spiritless dust.
The story, such as it is, is hackneyed mush of the most contrived and patronizing kind.
One of those exercises in romantic whimsy that misses its mark: It's alternately sappy and uncomfortably harsh.
It's telling ... that the most compelling performance in the film comes from Cindy Crawford, making her long-unawaited return to film after 1995's Fair Game.
A muddy, cliché-ridden sudsfest that lurches uncertainly between comedy and soap opera without finding its emotional or visual footing.
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