Relentlessly downbeat, with a glimmer of a payoff in the last couple of scenes, Sleepwalking is a film that has 'indie' written all over it -- for better and for worse.
Comment
03/13/08
Sleepwalking (2008)
18
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:57
Fresh:10
Rotten:47
Average Rating:4.2/10
Consensus: Despite some sharp performances, Sleepwalking suffers from a grimness of tone and sluggish pacing.
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Nick Stahl (Sin City, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines), AnnaSophia Robb (Bridge to Terabithia, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Academy Award® winner Charlize Theron (Monster, North... [More]
Starring: Charlize Theron, Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Hopper
Director: William Maher
Reviews for Sleepwalking
Well-intentioned to a fault, Sleepwalking blurs the line between dramatizing free-floating misery and spreading it.
03/13/08
The cast performs gamely in this grim and gray affair, but with Stanford's words and dead end story, the actors never really stood a chance.
03/14/08
The movie seems terrified of true psychological complexity or perversity. It's less a family tragedy than a lousy country dirge.
03/14/08
It’s apparent some meaningful visuals are being approached here, but it seems like the film keeps missing its mark.
03/17/08
The film is a dissection of damaged goods, but in place of a steady hand guiding matters to believable and sympathetic ends, director Bill Maher (not that one) takes the picture to unwanted extremes of behavior and guilt.
03/13/08
It's a story, which is more than Snow Angels had. It's still miserable lowlifes who can't hold menial jobs languishing in feeling bad.
03/14/08
The movie seems unusually honest in portraying the no-option existence of the working poor, but the story slips into melodrama in the last reel.
12/08/08
Charlize Theron only gets better as an actress, and she certainly wouldn't sign on to a low-budget indie such as Sleepwalking without believing in the material. The material, alas, does Theron no favors.
03/14/08
Despite its deficiencies, and the inadequate screen time allotted to Theron (who's quite good), Sleepwalking has a core of feeling. It's about a do-gooder who, lacking all skills for it, does good anyway. His emotional odyssey has real poignancy.
03/14/08
We come to realize the trip isn't taking us very far and the engine of sympathy is running on vapor.
03/11/08
Sleepwalking is an unfortunate title for a movie that appears to be doing just that.
03/13/08
Mature adult drama sinks under its own weight.
03/13/08
The movie is so overly familiar, and its take on the dysfunctional family dynamics is so unoriginal, that the whole thing might as well have been titled Generic Bleak Sundance Film Festival Drama No. 500.
03/20/08
A small-scale family drama that walks the walk, but doesn't seem to know where it's going half the time.
03/13/08
It’s a film of mood -- and the mood is perfectly captured.
03/24/08
As the abusive patriarch, Dennis Hopper gives such an atrocious, one-dimensional performance that he completely throws out of balance a family melodrama that has few artistic or psychological merits to begin with.
02/27/08
If you had programmed a computer to come up with a movie that is nothing but a string of the deadliest indie-film situations and moods, you'd have Sleepwalking, a soporific dud, which should have been tossed out of Sundance.
03/12/08
Theron sneaks out the door roughly 1/2 an hour into the picture. What is the movie to do without her energy?
05/15/08
The actors' Herculean effort to extract meaning from their characters provides a few moments of relief from this troublesome story.
03/10/08
Latest News for Sleepwalking
July 04, 2008:
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March 17, 2008:
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March 14, 2008:
Taking its cue from the tabloids, this is yet another addition to that tacky category of scandal sheet cinema. Why do celebrities with charmed Hollywood lives imagine everyday people as a bunch of sleazy or dimwitted degenerates, misfits and assassins.
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March 13, 2008:
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