Critics scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.
out of 100
Metascore®Mixed or average reviewsbased on a weighted average of allcritic review scores.
A painfully stolid movie that lumbers past emotional issues like a wrestler in a cafeteria line, putting a little of everything on his plate.
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Should have worked on our emotions like a scalpel, made us cry and bleed. But, though it's an affecting, polished film, it's not satisfying. [12 March 1999, Friday, p.A]
Grosbard mercifully avoids melodrama -- the only real false notes are musical ones, from a score by Elmer Bernstein that turns familiar and trite when the film does not.
Ends up insisting on pat and overly tidy resolutions that are at variance with the emotional chaos it's nominally attempting to convey. [12 March 1999, Calendar, p.F-1]
Paced more like an action movie than a drama, and, when a pause finally occurs at the end credits, we realize that it hasn't been an altogether satisfying ride.
If the film was less than satisfying as a big-screen event, it's still worth renting for Pfeiffer, who valiantly portrays the devastating complexities of grief and guilt.
Two films in one: an intriguing child-disappearance mystery and an uncommonly affecting domestic drama realized by four terrific central performances.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Treat Williams give such magnetic performances that they elevate the film way above its middlebrow sensibility and proclivity for neat resolutions.
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