I can understand why Peter O’Toole did it. His character gives him the opportunity to play an artist who is a passionate man and adamant about his opinions on art, but is also very depressed by the loss of his wife and slips in and out of delusions and semi-comatose states. So much so that when seeing him speak in one of the bonus extras, after watching the movie, I was shocked by his complete lucididty. I bet it was fun to play that.

Marcia Gay Hardin does well in her role but I can’t say that her character ever really grabbed me.

Richard Moll, Chris Elliot and Charlotte Rae are given ‘character’ roles which they play very well. Geoffrey Lewis however, realy does a great turn with his role and made me feel the man’s grief.

Richard Burgi was given a bad stereotype to play and he brought more humanity and sympathy to it than I would have thought possible.

Aaron Ashmore was completely robbed as his two best scenes were left out of the movie. Be sure and watch the deleted scenes to see his work. Otherwise he has a typical little brother role, which he plays well.

Jared Padalecki was well cast, as his character is lost and conflicted throughtout the movie and he is the kind of actor who can play that. He can REACT well, which is a talent that many actors could use a little work on. He is a sympathetic character and I actually cared about what happened to him, even though the ending was predictable from the beginning. He has one major scene with Peter O’Toole, which he plays the hell out of. He needs to carry this movie and he does.

And it is a heavy load to carry. The script sucks. Period. Only the performances save it. The editing is also very bad, imo. I feel like they used voice-overs in some parts to explain what was happening in scenes where actual scenes showing what was going on would have helped. Also the is a montage of things going on at one point that seemed rushed and confusing to me. Like – we need these scenes but instead we’ll just show you a second of each and hope you can figure it out for yourself.

So I give it a C+.

But, Jancy, please do check out the film for yourself, then please return to this space and let us know what you thought. Who knows? We might have a hidden masterpiece on our hands.