Inventing the Abbotts (1997)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Memorable, crazy movie

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Despite a solid Joaquin Phoenix lead, Inventing the Abbotts is a trashy drama about nothing.There are only two likable characters, Doug and Helen and it's all pointless. Jacey seems to get off the hook pretty easy, considering Doug ends up with Pam. They had an opportunity to give the film some meaning there, but failed. Some stitches and sit down to lunch, don't think so. The narration is also annoying as it doesn't match the actor, it's not like Phoenix is a child, why didn't he just do it?

For a moderate-length movie this one seemed really long. The drama is drawn- out, profoundly annoying, and dull, even supposing it's an accurate depiction of the time. While Liv Tyler's character, Pam, is particularly unbearable, Doug is the typical liberal Hollywood wussy-man putz who gets fixated on one girl -- not unlike Forest Gump -- and refuses to move on, perhaps owing to something more interesting than his low self-esteem and total social ineptitude; perhaps because his feelings for Pam remind him of a purer, innocent, idyllic time before everything in life became so complicated; but to me that's a cop-out. That's hardly a real-world love story if you ask me. Obviously Doug's character is such that the possibility of finding another girl out there who would accept him for who he is not even considered. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I have to give Joaquin Phoenix respect for playing the part to a tee. Not even Tom Hanks can play the town idiot as well as Joaquin. That said, the film gets points for good acting from Joaquin Phoenix and for a somewhat realistic plot, even though the Holts and Abbotts simply cannot help "running into" one another all across the states at colleges, airports, and elsewhere. Go figure: these star-crossed lovers simply cannot avoid one another when "society" forbids their coupling. The bottom line, though, is the film is so unbearable to watch for its "love story," which is so sterile and pathetic that I cannot give it more than 5/10. It gets that many points only because even for the lack of realism of certain plot points, I believe it gives an overall realistic depiction of the rigid 1950s yes-man mentality.

The amazing brotherly resemblance between JOAQUIN PHOENIX and BILLY CRUDUP is a drawback to casual viewers of the film because they look so much alike, especially in the early scenes, that it's easy to lose track of the storyline when you can't tell which brother is on the screen at key moments.KATHY BAKER is the mother raising two sons in a small American town during the 1950s and she gives a genuinely real performance even though her role is underwritten with not enough character exposition to let us know her well enough. But that's not too much of a deficit since the story revolves almost completely around the relationship--the coming of age--of two brothers in conflict with each other over everything, including girls.As the younger, more sensitive and less worldly brother, JOAQUIN PHOENIX is amazingly well cast as he deals with each crisis involving a wealthy family, the Abbots, and their daughters, all of whom are victims of a lie concerning his mother's relationship with Mr. Abbot. BILLY CRUDUP is equally effective as his look alike brother who has his own way of settling scores until he decides he must leave the small town behind and make his own way in the world.The '50s era is well realized, although the coarseness of some of the dialog is not always appropriate for that era when cuss words weren't tossed around as liberally as they are today.Summing up: Slowly paced, but holds the interest because of the central relationships and the fact that you care about what happens to these people.

To be honest, the main reason I saw this movie was because I wanted to see Liv Tyler. To my surprise, here she plays an awkward, gawkish young girl whose appeal is overshadowed by that of her two older sisters. But there is something so engaging and charming about her simplicity, her shyness, and her ability to follow her own path in spite of her family's wealth and social standing.All the cast are terrific, with Kathy Baker, Jennifer Connolly, Liv, and Joaquin Phoenix taking top honors. It is the type of movie that transports you to another time and place, and to another age. You feel what it was like to be 18 in 1957: the class differences, the social constraints related to dating, all the bittersweet ache of young love.At its core, this movie is about the relationship of two brothers. The narration begins with that, and really that is the core that unites all the other subplots. It's a fascinating relationship too, because they are so different yet their paths end up crossing in so many ways. And at the end, it's clear that the viewer is going to be drawn to one (Doug), but yet the other (JC) is not condemned or criticized; you just come to understand that he is driven to do the asinine things he does by powers he cannot seem to tame within himself.I also have to say I was delighted by the fact that the protagonists (Doug and Pam) are modest and moral in their relationship, while the screwed up characters (JC, Eleanor) are promiscuous and amoral. It would have been easy to conform to stereotypes and have Doug and Pam in bed at the earliest opportunity, but the fact that they don't adds tension and drama and ultimately makes for an excellent story. There are a handful of instances of the F-word, and two brief sexual scenes, otherwise this would have been a great movie for younger teens as well.Overall, an excellent movie, badly underrated by IMDb users, and well worth the watching. I gave it 8 stars.