Evening

BOTTOM LINE: Despite the stellar cast and moving visuals, this film is a waste of a good idea, poorly directed and is nothing short of disappointing.

THE GOOD: "Evening" has a lot of good building blocks to make an excellent film. The first is the idea itself; seguing between Ann Grant's past and present life where as an old woman she re-lives her past through a crucial point in her life surrounding a man named Harris who seems to grab the attention of everyone he comes in to contact with. Through this she lives out her brief affair with the man and how that impacts on her best friend who is in love with Harris but about to get married to someone else and how that impacts on that relationship. This is then juxtaposed with the present where she is an old woman on the verge of death and her two daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) are also facing problems of their own and look to their mother for advice. The main theme of the film is that 'there is no such thing as a mistake, only experiences.' Through this, all of the characters are supposed to go through the journey of learning this lesson. "Evening" also has a stellar cast, which also includes Meryl Streep and Glenn Close. You would think with all that talent on offer and a strong core theme you would get a great film, but despite some very moving, colourful images....

THE BAD: The script and direction of this film is decidedly confused and just outright poor. You can see the filmmakers were trying to get you swept up in to the dramas and lives of these women but you walk out without caring less about what happens to them when you know if it was done properly you would have cared. A lot of the problem stems from the poorly structured script which doesn't allow for the relationships to develop but rather arbitrarily moves the characters from one point to the next. You don't really see why Claire Danes would fall in love with or even be interested in Harris until the nanosecond before they get started. And then she turns on her own boyfriend suddenly (her best friend's brother) and tells him to grow up and do it without her; he deserves it but it's done without any build-up or obvious previous signs from Claire Danes' character. The pay-offs are right but there are no setups leaving you wondering, "where the hell did that come from?". The ultimate occurs when the said boyfriend gets runover by a car and dies, but it's done in a kind of arty way and we don't know who did it or even if it was intentional. Also, Claire Danes seems to be trying too hard, coming across quite unnatural and flat in her acting and since the film is by and large resting on her shoulders, it really does break the film if she's not carrying it (but then she didn't have anything to work with so probably not her fault). All in all, it's a big mess and as a result, you come away laughing unintentionally in a lot of scenes which are meant to be the most moving.

RATING: 3/10

Todd Murphy <br />
http://www.allaboutmovies.net