Unfortunate to be released 3 days after the 9/11 attacks, this movie sank without a trace.
The fact it's taken me thirteen years to watch a movie staring my childhood crush Diane Lane, the always usually reliable Stellan Skarsgard and one of my favourite young actress's of the era Leelee Sobieski says how badly this movie did and was reviewed upon release.
When Ruby (Sobieski) and Rhett Baker's parents are killed in a car accident, they must travel to Malibu, to live with Terrence and Erin Glass, their former neighbours. But they are not the friendly couple the claim to be.
The movie is massively flawed in several areas, I have never seen Lane put in a performance this bad before, and likewise Skarsgard puts in a career low performance. Only Sobieski puts in a good performance, and she certainly fills out a bikini nicely. Both talented and attractive in equal measure, it's because of her the movie succeeds where it does. I'm amazed her career never hit higher heights. Bruce Dern pops up in a role as a lawyer and he is also OK.
A lot of my problems with this movie are more to do with the script and it's direction.
It is lazily shot with just the actors seemingly placed in front of the camera. As for the script it does not have a natural flow with lots of things going on all at once and lots of things unexplained as characters come and go.
Outside of Sobieski, there is little to enjoy, but another asset to this movie is the score. It hits all the rights spots, at all the right times.
Despite everything I think the premise of the movie is a good one, and with Sobieski at the lead it's more than watchable. I think released a month earlier, this would have done very differently.
A 7/10 is a generous score, but since the movie was carried solely by Sobieski it's a worthy one.
The fact it's taken me thirteen years to watch a movie staring my childhood crush Diane Lane, the always usually reliable Stellan Skarsgard and one of my favourite young actress's of the era Leelee Sobieski says how badly this movie did and was reviewed upon release.
When Ruby (Sobieski) and Rhett Baker's parents are killed in a car accident, they must travel to Malibu, to live with Terrence and Erin Glass, their former neighbours. But they are not the friendly couple the claim to be.
The movie is massively flawed in several areas, I have never seen Lane put in a performance this bad before, and likewise Skarsgard puts in a career low performance. Only Sobieski puts in a good performance, and she certainly fills out a bikini nicely. Both talented and attractive in equal measure, it's because of her the movie succeeds where it does. I'm amazed her career never hit higher heights. Bruce Dern pops up in a role as a lawyer and he is also OK.
A lot of my problems with this movie are more to do with the script and it's direction.
It is lazily shot with just the actors seemingly placed in front of the camera. As for the script it does not have a natural flow with lots of things going on all at once and lots of things unexplained as characters come and go.
Outside of Sobieski, there is little to enjoy, but another asset to this movie is the score. It hits all the rights spots, at all the right times.
Despite everything I think the premise of the movie is a good one, and with Sobieski at the lead it's more than watchable. I think released a month earlier, this would have done very differently.
A 7/10 is a generous score, but since the movie was carried solely by Sobieski it's a worthy one.