The Savages

Todd Says:

4 STARS

O.K., if you saw the trailer for this movie and thought that it looked like a funny little movie about a disfunctional family trying to deal with their aging father, then you are exactly where I was two days ago. Let me go ahead and warn you, if you want to watch that funny little movie about a disfunctional family, then you'll have to look else where. That trailer was put together using cunning editing to slice scenes together to make jokes. This is not a funny movie. It is a depressing film about a pair of siblings dealing with their angry dementia-suffering father, and their own disappointing lives.

Don't get me wrong, this movie is good. Very good actually. But that trailer is not for this movie. This movie is gritty and real, and will leave you (if you are anything like me) wondering, if not stressing, about what you are going to do when the time comes to take care of that parent who can no longer take care of themselves. Luckily, I have two older siblings who can bother with that. But I digress.

The characters in this movie, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, are so real that they are sure to remind you of someone you know (if not a little bit of yourself). Both do a superb job. The story is gut-wrenchingly honest and well told. The cinematography is perfect. This movie probably deserves a 5 STAR rating, but I'm still a little off balance from that whole trailer fiasco.

Alexis says:

3 STARS

Savages is sad and real and honest, but not so funny as the trailer suggested. It is so real and honest that it makes me appreciate the purity of Hoffman acting even more and leaves me searching the internet for my own dysfunctional family's patriarchs final residence. The story was sad, the characters sad, the ending only semi-hollywoodesque and yet I can't bear but to give this movie more than 3 stars. It just depressed me, it didn't quite move me in the way that I wanted it to and that is why I give it only 3 stars.