Wonderful performances
I love kevin spacey and denis leary both...and to see them starring in a movie together was awesome. It was even better when i saw that judy davis was in it.
What a fantastic movie...and talk about funny.
Yes, an excellent movie with outstanding performances by Dennis Leary, Kevin Spacey and Glynis Johns. It's crude, humorous and entertaining. Despite the f**k's and s**t's it portrays common dialogues and events in deteriorated everyday life. Personally, it's just great to see movies where life is not perfect, where stereotypes fill their role (like the mother in law) and where you can just laugh at reality.
Kevin Spacey does a perfect example of this when he finally decides to speak out and in order to do so he starts beating the Christmas tree with the fire poker ..."the corpse still has the floor"...
Great movie, the only one that still makes me laugh everytime I watch it.
Christine Baranski, Raymond Barry and Robert J. Steinmiller Jr.(who made The Ref his last motion picture, or others did) all did great too. In fact, this movie just sings in my memory. I try to watch it every holiday season.
Mr. Leary is so fine in this role I see why he's had a fruitful career.
SPOILER WARNING
Yeah, I agree. Great cast and some absolutely great comic gems. Overall I thought this movie seemed pretty good. The writing was wonderful as well, a really sharp, barbed, commentative script. I did however have a couple problems with the movie as a whole though. It seemed rather like a one note song. The characters didn't grow or evolve or come to any personal discovery until the end, and even then it was the stereotypical reversal of roles, Spacey's character stuck up for himself for once and the mother was put in her place so to speak. The movie was almost like letting some real heavyweight comic actors go at it and see what happens. Sure there were comic results but they didn't completely work for the story. The ending was also rather sloppy in my opinion and a bit contrived. I did buy the fact that this horrible event had caused them to reexamine themselves and perhaps revitalize their marriage (maybe not), but the convict getting away and all was just too much. I guess I wanted this film to probe more into the human condition, it did show such promise at times, but it just didn't go the extra mile. Regardless of all that, it was a decent, entertaining film, and while not a holiday classic in my book, two well spent hours of movie watching.
7/10