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Good, but overrated.
by HeatherM (movies profile)
Mar 8, 2008
8
of
8 people found this review helpful
I suppose you're wondering why the bleedin' hell I would call The Hours overrated. You probably think I'm some sort of stupid action mopvie fan who thinks that anything intellectually challenging isn't worth watching. Actually, that's the whole problem with The Hours. It isn't intellectually challenging.
The Hours mish-mashes three stories into one movie, one about the depressed Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman) writing her book Mrs. Dalloway, one about Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), who is depressed and is reading Mrs. Dalloway. The third is about Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), who has a friend (Edf Harris) who has AIDS and wants to commit suicide, which makes her depressed.
The major problem is that only one of the characters seems to have a major reason for wanting to die, and that's Ed Harris's character. He gives an astonishing performance as the AIDS-stricken Richard, a novelist and poet who just wants to get it all over with. His grief and sorrow are harsh and real, and left a lasting impression on me long after I saw the film.
Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown, however, do not wield what most would consider adequete motivation to just want to go out and end it all. Woolf seems to be doing fine, she lives in a nice house, has a nice life, but is still manically depressed (no, not maniacally, MANICALLY...there was not a typo there.) Brown has even less reason to want to die. She has a kid, has a nice, devoted husband, and a perfect little suburban life. A bit boring, yes, but not worthy cause for death. Plus, it would be just plain self-centered to make your kid live without a mother. Her child is a young Richard, thus tying all three stories together.
My major problem with The Hours isn't the performances (all of the actors make the most out of their parts), or the costumes or sets or Phnilip Glass's beautiful musical score...It's the fact that the film has made itself out to be more than it is. It doesn't have an extremely thorough study of psychology except in the Streep-Harris story. It doesn't have a lot of plot either, and it also lacks good cinematography or even really good direction. Parts of it drag, and, to be quite honest, are just plain boring. But I admired Kidman, Streep, Moore, Harris, Alison Janney, Toni Collette, John C. Reilly, and Claire Danes enough to give the film, if I were on Ebert and Roeper, a mild thumb up. |
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