Evening (2007)

Fresh and Exciting

An absolute waste of money

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The last thing I want to watch on screen is Tom Cruise leap off another tall building - I would much rather watch a thought provoking film of with legendary actresses Vanessa Redgrave, the lovely Claire Danes, Toni Collette, the late Natasha Richardson and Meryl Streep and Glenn Close fill the screen with their brilliance. Patrick Wilson is the male lead along with Hugh Dancy the son with a drinking problem in the Newport setting of a wealthy family and a marriage of their oldest daughter. The screen is filled with an era of of the 1950's and full of nostalgia in the costumes and the decor. The characters are full, rich and developed with Clare Danes getting the majority of the screen time, what red-blooded male would not enjoy her presence on film. It is a story of lost love and questions that haunt us all in this life. The filming is beautiful, the acting is first-rate and the cast is astonishing. How they assembled this quality cast together I will only guess, but they all must have seen in the script what the movie could be and is, worth an "Evening" and a DVD purchase to add to your collection, the movie reveals more of itself each time you view it. If you have a longing for an era gone by, when men were gentlemen and women were ladies, this film will take you on a trip to Newport, Rhode Island, home of the very wealthy on the East coast and through a story happening in the mind of Ann Grant in her last days, dreaming of that one evening that was life captivating and a story in real-time as her daughters Nina and Constance wait at their mother's home in her last days as she nears death upstairs in her bed and dreams of her youth and the lost love she had with Harris that weekend in Newport. Watch it with your girlfriend, wife, lover and it is sure to be a meaningful night ....

Who was Bobby? I saw the movie twice and don't remember a Bobby. There was an extra named Bob once I saw the credits here on IMDb. What happened to Bobby.I wonder if this person means Buddy played by Hugh Dancy. But if they watched the movie how could they get the name wrong? What does this now bring up. A person gets a major character's name wrong and passes it off as a fake character? I don't get it. I don't think they saw it. It's very sad when comment on movies or anything that they haven't watched and try to pass that along and then vote for it. Maybe Bob, an extra, died at some point, but I didn't see it in the movie.

What a cast. Every actress we've ever loved, short of Judy Garland, Bette Davis, and Greta Garbo is in this movie. And yet "Evening" is an awful mess. It's so bad, so inept, so misguided, such a betrayal of the acting talent of its stars, that, after forcing myself to sit through it, I wish I had never seen it. It's that much of a godawful botch and betrayal of its precious material.The production values are very high. The film takes place in two time periods: the 1950s and the present day. The costumes, make-up, and vintage cars are perfect. The lighting, cinematography, and sets are perfect.I blame the writer. The script is incoherent, pointless, and, worse, graceless. There is not one happy moment of verbal magic, or even just a moment where words do any kind of meaningful work whatsoever. What was he thinking? Really? I want to know.I feel a sense of personal betrayal by this movie. This is very much a woman's story (and I'm a woman) and a story of family (and I'm part of a family) and a story of class conflict (something familiar to me) and a story of living large and dying thoughtfully (I've been with the dying as they were working out the complicated narratives of their lives.) All these themes were handled so hamhandedly by the writer I just want to scream.Hugh Dancy, as Buddy, a badly behaved rich boy, somehow manages to rise above the wreckage, and deliver the film's one coherent character, and the one character who manages to arouse some emotion in the viewer. Toni Collette never makes a wrong move, but she's given nothing by the writer. Clare Danes comes off badly.I recommend that you *not* see this movie. Rewatch almost anything else, from "Beaches" to "Terms of Endearment" to "Sliding Doors" to "Letter from an Unknown Woman."

I really wanted to like this, but it never really took off. There wasn't enough substance to explain why the two characters had this strong-I'll-never-forget-you connection. They just met and then were immediately in love (yes, I've heard of love at first sight, but they seemed to be saying it was more than that but never really explained it). Then the end of the movie just fizzled and didn't explain what happened between them.This movie did have moments. The scenes with the older woman and her daughters were nice, but this movie never lived up to what it felt like it could be.