Renee Zellweger is radiant, but the rest of this movie just does not work. It's like a hamburger-jello-mold salad--interesting idea, but who ever thought it would actually work on film? I like director LaBute's two previous films--they were mercilessly honest and chillingly funny. This film manages only to be merciless and chilling--with jumbo dollops of the cutes. (As high concept, think: the Doris Day-Rock Hudson movie Sam Peckinpah might have made--now reduce your expectations to match the present, mass-produced state of Hollywood.) That actors as talented as Freeman, Kinnear, Eckhart, Vince, and Janney ALMOST make their scenes come alive is a testament to the immensity of their talents to rise above material that just does not cohere. I would have found Freeman's corny, feel-good-about-yourself speech at the end of the movie funny (in a Lynchean way) if it weren't for the nagging suspicion that this unconvincingly tacked-on moral is meant to be accepted seriously.
movie reviews