| Inventing the Abbotts | | Cast : | Liv Tyler, Joaquin Phoenix, Jennifer Connelly | | Director : | Pat O'Connor | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | April 04, 1997 | | DVD Released Date : | December 17, 2002 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 06, 2004 | | Summary | steve | Content
 | Only reason I saw this film was for Michael Sutton. He plays the character named Steve.
Very good movie! |
| Rating | | | Date | April 03, 2004 | | Summary | Good Movie | Content
| I saw this movie five years ago when I was in Jamaica. The movie "Inventing the Abbotts" focuses on the typical 1950s family that rose to the American dream of making it big living in the suburbs. The Abbots, a wealthy manufacturing family, maintained the image of family values. Beneath the surface, the older sister had to marry because she was two months pregnant. And the younger sister was a [promiscuous girl] who was sent to a convent. Pam, the middle, is stuck in the middle. She lives between her family's expectations and her love for Doug Holt. Jacey, the older brother, sleeps with the older and younger Abbott sisters to get back at the father for tarnishing the mother's reputation. Doug's love for Pam is unconditional. Pam runs away because she is afraid of what others are thinking.
The movie was a good drama because it gave an in-depth look of America post-WW2. The dream that was supposedly a nightmare for both the elite and the working class. Each is struggling with the self, the community, and society. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 30, 2004 | | Summary | A rare acting school for young actors | Content
| Few movies I've seen provide, 7 years after its making, a retrospective of great actors and actresses in the make. Just watch the movie and then fish for recent works with each of those young talents. From Crudup to Joaquin to Tyler to Going to Jenniffer Connelly - what we see in Inventing the Abbotts is an amazing set of performers reaching to stardoom. I believe the film should be classified as mandatory in acting schools. For the rest, I believe this script is as close to reality as it can get. A small town, a wealthy family, a classic rich/poor idiosyncratic drama, false assumptions which could ruin lives, hard working single parents, young daughters struggling with the coming of age, ... all quite well integrated into a movie which is delightful to see and to call your attention for preemptive judgement. Joanna Going, Liv Tyler and Jenniffer Connelly are absolutely remarkable and beautiful. Yet the prize goes to Joaquin, for his amazing performance. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 17, 2004 | | Summary | The Invention of a Great Movie | Content
| I love this movie with passion. It has everything that a movie could possibly need it has romance, fighting, disease, death, and everything in between. Even though it is something like a soap opera it is still a beautiful story in my mind I mean when you have all those elements it is just a great movie. The story is that two families from different sides of the tracks romance each other. Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) and Pam (Liv Tyler) romance each other through the entire movie but they keep breaking up so we never know whether or not they will end up together in the end. Now Jacey (Billy Crudup) Doug's brother romances Elinor (Jennifer Connelly) and Alice (Joanna Going) and we never know if he will ever grow up. If I give away anymore information other than that it will completley ruin the movie for you so I recommend this to all people out there who are over the age of 14. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!! |
| Rating | | | Date | January 04, 2004 | | Summary | Things just get dragged out way too slowly in this one | Content
| Every once in a while there is a rude reminder that where I live is, relatively speaking, in the backwaters of the country. In 1997 I must have seen the trailer for "Inventing the Abbotts" a half-dozen times, but the film never came here, so I never had to actually decide if I would pay money to see it in a movie theater or not, although clearly I took my time in getting around to finally watching it. Of course, now the cast of "Inventing the Abbotts" is much more recognizable than it was back then, with Jennifer Connolly being an Oscar winner, Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar nominee, Billy Crudup having traded Penny Lane for a case of beer, and Liv Tyler becoming mortal to marry the King of Gondor. But it is not that difficult to think back to when they were relatively known faces. The greatest strength of this film is the original score by Michael Kamen, which consistently gave scenes and moments of this film a power that was beyond what the script and the actors were providing. The story is about the Abbotts, a rich family in the 1950s living in a small Illinois town with three daughters, and the Holts brothers, Doug (Phoenix" and J.C. (Crudup). The former is the narrator of the tale, while the later is "addicted" to the Abbotts, attempting to blot out a grievance against the family by seducing the daughters. Doug is more fascinated with J.C.'s story than with his own, but it is Doug that is of more interest to us, especially with his affection for young Pamela Abbott (Tyler), which is momentarily forgotten for a while by his lust for Eleanor (Connelly). Basically this is a film that gives every indication that Doug and Pamela should end up together and be allowed to live as happily every after as their tortured families and histories might allow, but J.C. and his obsession keeps getting in the way. Meanwhile some of the secrets hidden by each family are doled out bit by bit, completing the picture of the animosity that exists between the Abbotts and the Holts. Lloyd Abbott (Will Patton) knows all about marrying into a rich family, and he is not going to allow that to happen with his daughters, but he is just one of several roadblocks that stands between any of these characters and some home of happiness. One thing for sure is that "Inventing the Abbotts" is set in a slower time. The pacing of the film is slow, the dialogue is spoken in slow and measured terms, the narration is redundant repetitive, and you become convinced we are never going to get to where the film should end because it will slowly grind to a complete halt. If it were not for our affection towards Pamela, Kathy Baker's performance as the boy's mom, and Kamen's score, I might have given up on this film, especially when Eleanor was shipped away by her father as soon as she had given the story some energy. But by that time we learn that J.C. has committed the greatest possible sin against his brother, I was at least ticked off enough to stay around for the end. The fault for this lies with director Pat O'Connor, especially since he showed in his previous effort, "Circle of Friends," that he can breath live into a story. However, he failed to do that here. |
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