Inventing the Abbotts (1997)

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

With Dr. Manhattan and Jen, we are back to the iconic fifties, in a town between Hill Valley and Derry. The mood of those years is well done between the streets, the fashion, the cars and the houses. When they go to the country, it has the flavor of Smallville. Next, the brothers goes to campus and this is a period of life that i miss. The story is captivating because it's about brotherly relation and that speaks really to me as i have a brother. Maybe the two actors look a bit old for their parts but they have a real chemistry. It's strange to see Jen being the wild one and Tyler, the prude one because we expected the contrary but at the end, they are both excellent in their characters.

Regurgitating the Abbotts may have been a better name for this film, because there is nothing inventive about it. What starts off well, degrades in quality to nothing more than a dull and overlong exercise in the stagy writing style of soap opera. It is a story with nowhere to go, and despite some touching moments, and a delightful young cast, The movie is aggravating. I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the dialogue because it's so corny. The makers of Inventing the Abbotts give their product no room to grow. It's ultimately devoid of direction believability and stability, And we end up spending time with five or six characters who seem like they could amount to so much more than the story makes of them. It is unfair to all the smart people in the audience. If the film won't commit, Why should we.

There was a time when films made for women, the so-called "Women's picture", were also entertaining and involving for a wider audience to enjoy. Now they are an exclusively female designed, designated, manufactured and sold product. The "chick flick" of today. There's got to be more than just endless variations on "who's going with whom". The same giggly obsession of 8-year-old girls in the schoolyard matching up their schoolmates. It reminds me of an analogy with duplicate bridge where the same characters and elements can be played a different way each time and still lead to an arbitrary predetermined ending. Maybe there's a better analogy.When I was a kid the Saturday matinée had one feature left over from the 30s, which was a slapstick race. (The concept was later taken by Hanna –Barbera and turned into "Wacky Racers.) Tickets with numbers were distributed at the box office before the film. Those with the "winning number" would get a prize. It would be the same race every week except for the tacked on last shot in which the number of that weeks "winner" would be announced, which, I feel now, probably coincided with the number least in distribution. The girl with the final embrace seems more determined by whom the talents agencies thought was the better bet to become a money-spinning super-star. It was, as they say in the wrestling industry, a worked result.Yeah, it's worse than soap opera if you think about it. It's just whose going with whom to the total exclusion of the outside world. At least soaps have some stupid plots weaving in and out of the who is with whom. Nothing anyone does, thinks or says has anything to do with engaging the big world at large. There is no context beyond the period setting, here 1957. Wonderful shinny collector's cars (too bad they sound wrong. A '57 T-Bird did not growl like a sports car. It was a big fat V-8 hooked up to a spongy automatic transmission.) Men's clothes are wrong, the hair is wrong, the buses are wrong, as is the whole demeanor of small town folks at the time. Guys, even a-holes, didn't say the f words quite so openly but its used here to emphasize the hurt one woman feels.Hugh Heffner was from a small town in Illinois and when he began Playboy he supplied the whole script for teen-age guys to use in order to get laid. It just wasn't a question of natural and irresistible attraction but men had to go through a whole pseudo- intellectual song and dance to get even some stink on their finger. The phrases "contemporary mores" and "mature adults" were used a lot. People act and talk like 1997, not 1957. Did I hear one brother call the other "dude"?As for what passes for conflict the poor, "working class" boys from the other side of the tracks live as well as M-G-M poverty in the good old days. Actually schoolteachers are considered middle class. They live in a swell house with perfect wood details and well- painted walls. The people who lived on the other side of the tracks were either colored or poor white trash. This concocted conflict has to be folded in to give the bland drama a little bit of spice. Even the environment is flattened out to be uniformly pleasant and unremarkable. Its always-fair weather, none of those sweaty 100-degree summers or winters with snow up to one's nipples. Anyway the retro-design element is shoved out of the way after the first half-hour and the somewhat baffling mating dance takes center stage and the five are whittled down to the inevitable two. And they live happily ever after and had two children, both girls. The End. What was the film about? Harry Cohn used to lay out this kind of plot in the most salacious terms. Yeah, it gets down to that. Permutations and stops and starts between various Holts and Abbotts. Relationships equal couplings equal voyeurism and we're back at cinema's ground zero – watching other people "do it". It's just that certain males get off watching porn and certain women get off on "relationships".Then there's the music, typical for this type of picture - insipid. Synthetic noodelings on an electric piano for two scenes, deep swelling amorphous strings for transitions and actual movement. There's some not quite correct period music and a tribute to the Elvis hit of the era- Love Me Tender, but this is soon submerged under the overwhelming need of shuffling the brothers and sisters around. Like everything else in the picture – nothing to distract you from the issue always at hand- whose getting with whom.I'm not saying there's not an audience for this. Some of the comments on the IMDb were from people emotionally effected by INVENTING THE ABBOTTS. There was just enough information to engage their imaginations, erotic or otherwise, the hell with the world or 1957 or anything else. I'm sure the manufacturers of this film knew exactly who their audience was and manipulated the film specifically for them. It's just that women's films don't have to be one-dimensional panderings. They can tell their stories against a real world with real people or at least set against a backdrop of some import. It's got to be about something more than just who's going with whom.

It is not that great movie .. I felt it is uneven sometimes. Anyway, I liked this movie because it says brotherhood could be tough bond sometimes.. other times it could be really something great, I believe great times between brothers is the common thing (or at least wish for it).I don't know if most of people who have seen it share me my admiration of how the movie realistically & truthfully shows this great relationship ..Billy Crudup & Joaquin Phoenix were good .. I felt like if they were good friends at least to have such a natural brother-chemistry thing.There were a few good lines here and there .. some moments were touching.Liv Taylor's performance was the best female performance in the movie .. not to forget Kathy Baker's performance which was very good .. Jennifer Connelly, Joanna Going & Barbara Williams weren't bad but they were so good either.