Who's in It: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close
The Basics: When you're raised in white-trash surroundings like I was, preppies and their summer homes hold an endless fascination. So by rights, I should have been mesmerized by this multigenerational weepie about high-WASP ladies and their secrets, loves and regrets (plot: dying mom and her morphine-soaked romantic memories playing out against contemporary friction among her grown daughters). And I would have been mesmerized, too, were it not so draggy and dull, on-the-nose and full of itself.
What's the Deal? There's almost too much (capital-A) Acting going on. Every dignified A-lister in the cast is on her best behavior, being dour or delicate, engaged in private mournful reveries or brittle neurosis. Meanwhile, the direction makes every frame scream, "NOMINATE ME FOR A MAJOR AWARD!" It's exhausting.
Best Part That Will Remind You of That Lunesta Ad: A scene where Redgrave, as the matriarch dying of cancer, dreams she's chasing a glowing butterfly through her home, right past a moment of serious conversation between her two estranged daughters Richardson and Collette. She stops between them and, of course, they don't notice her because she's not really there. She looks wistfully at them and continues chasing the butterfly.
The Real Best Part: I always come back to a thing John Waters once said about boring movies: If it all sucks, at least you can look at the furniture. And this movie has furniture out the wazoo. And not just furniture, either — vintage clothes and cars and period details. Everything looks so perfect you could eat it. And the backdrop, a huge summer mansion (like Grey Gardens before the raccoons moved in) is a real-estate wet dream, with ocean views and perfectly trimmed lawns. It helped hold that nap at bay.
Real-Life Moms and Daughters Onscreen: Redgrave and real-life daughter Richardson star here. And Streep and her daughter Gummer (who looks so much like her mother it's almost shocking) play the same person at different ages.