The Door in the Floor (2004)

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The Door in the Floor is very thought provoking and quite emotional and really is gut wrenching. There are several sub-plots and one feature is the affair between Marion Cole (played by the beautiful Kim Basinger) an Eddie O'Hare (played by Jon Foster) which went against typical movie norms. Traditionally, when the male seduces the female, the male is often older, or at least the actor is much older than the actress (e.g. Basic Instinct, Don't Look Now) but here Kim Basinger is 30 years older than Jon Foster, and kudos to the production team for not shying away from this.

Tod Williams served as both director and screenwriter for this drama, adapted from a portion of John Irving's novel A Widow for One Year in this movie,The Door In The Floor.It stars Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger together with Jon Foster and Bijou Phillips.Ted and Marion Cole are a couple whose marriage is on the verge of collapse. After their two teenage sons died in an auto accident, Marion fell into a deep depression from which she has never fully emerged. Meanwhile, Ted has drifted into repeated infidelity, his most recent mistress being the sexually ravenous Mrs. Vaughn and neither Ted nor Marion are willing or able to devote their full attention to their surviving daughter,Ruth. Ted, a successful author of books for children, hires Eddie, a bright 16-year-old prep-school student, to help him edit his latest manuscript. But Ted is fully aware that Eddie bears a striking resemblance to one of his late sons which would would have a powerful effect on Marion. Eddie quickly develops a strong attraction to his employer's beautiful wife, and Marion, torn between grief and desire, draws him into a sexual relationship that brings the family's many emotional crises to the breaking point. This is a complex, candid, and satisfying movie that brings back to the socially provocative films. It is an adult drama with characters you sympathize with in spite of their immoral behavior.Also,Jeff Bridges demonstrates once again that he is one of the finest actors with his great performance as Ted.Finally,this is one of the better adaptations of a John Irving novel.

This movie got off to a promising start in its depiction of Jeff Bridges's self-centered Ted, a womanizer who never gives much thought to his serial manipulations. However, "The Door" quickly deteriorates into a ripoff of "The Summer of '42" and the real-life Mary Kay Letourneau story as Ted's depressed wife Marion (Kim Basinger) is set up to seduce the horny high-school student Ted has brought into the home for the summer. As pretty as Basinger is, I didn't believe for a minute that Eddie would fall for her instead of the family's sexy young nanny or all the nubile young girls we're shown on the Hamptons beach. The movie made me cringe when we witness Eddie's attempts at masturbation, and I finally deleted the film once Marion walked in and he was too ashamed to face her. I may be biased but I don't think people go to the movies to squirm through this kind of trash. Admittedly I am the parent of a teenager and a pre-teen, but I found the intrusiveness of these scenes to be highly distasteful. If kids are going to explore their own bodies, please directors of the world, let them do so in privacy and dignity! I also found it offensive to have little Ruth, who looks to be about 4, tell her father, "your penis looks funny." I guess we're supposed to assume she saw Ted's erection -- another violation of a child's boundaries. This actress is a tiny little girl. Why was it necessary to give her this dialog? Call me a prude if you like but I found this movie to be so disrespectful to children that I lost interest in any surrounding storyline involving the presumptive grown-ups in the tale.I'm surprised that Jeff Bridges, an actor I've always respected, would allow himself to appear in garbage like this.

This film is an example of the Hollywood business types directing a project. Here's the idea: a prime audience demographic is teen-aged boys, get their hard-earned summer job money in return for help with those self- stimulation sessions. Get their ticket money with: a character to identify with: Eddie; a really beautiful woman (Kim Basinger) who gets naked for Eddie and does him 60 times over a summer at the beach. Three other somewhat less pretty, but attractive nonetheless, women who throw themselves at him (Mimi Rogers--full nudity front and back--and Amanda Posner, and Bijou Phillips). No parental guidance here. The (unaccountably wealthy) adults are irresponsible playpeople. chchchchchchiiiiinnnnngggg!