At Columbia University, during the week of John Belushi's death, lifelong friends Ben and Adam meet Nina at a student bar. After Nina and Adam marry, she goes to grad school in New York, while he begins a career as a writer. Ben marries Stanford law student Kat, and they both find work in New York. Lives are altered after Ben and Nina enter into an affair.
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Before starting to write this review I saw that this movie got a pretty bad score (6/10 at the time) and I really don't understand why that is. Perhaps it's not the greatest movie of all times, but it sure deserves a lot better than the actual rating. But I guess I know why it isn't such a popular movie: there aren't any action scenes, no fast cars, no big explosions... only a couple of people in their late twenties, early thirties who try to deal with their lives and relationships...Two men who have been friends since childhood have grown up, doing everything together their entire lives. When they go to college, they meet a young woman who works at the local bar. One of them falls in love and starts a relationship with her, while the other one claims that she isn't his type. But it's clear that between the two their is some kind of chemistry and after several failed relationships and a bad marriage, the other one starts an affair with his best friends wife...As I already said earlier in this review: this isn't a movie for people who want to see a lot of car chases or other action scenes. This is a movie for people who enjoy movies with some good dialogs and some nice acting, people who are used to watch independent or foreign movies. I'm one of those people and I was pleasantly surprised by this one. That's why I give it a 7.5/10.
Wonderful performances by all four leads (Fornlani, Morrow, Weber and Brook) and a terrific screenplay add up to very good indie-type film about relationships in the 90s. See it, if you're NOT just an action-junkie!
I'm not going to reveal the plot, but you can figure it out yourself after the first five minutes. This shouldn't stop you from seeing the movie, though, because you will still be on the edge of your seat rooting for the characters, whom you will come to know and be passionately involved with in the course of the movie. The acting is uniformly excellent and completely seamless; you get so involved with the character you feel you actually are there with them living their lives, and you forget that you are only watching them on the screen. The actors can't take all the credit, because the dialog is realistic to the point of being slightly uncomfortable to watch. I can't say whether it is the acting, the directing or the screenplay that deserves the credit here, but you could also say the same for American Beauty.I am writing this two days after having seen the movie and I still somehow feel that everything that happened in the movie also happened in my own life. Can you really expect any more from a movie?
Not only is the story of two brothers who love the same woman extremely boring, it is also very reactionary: the film basically sez that women ruin men's lives, it also sez "thou shalt not go to bed with your brother's wife"... certainly, a good piece of advice, but sit two hours in the cinema just to hear that? .... it's like the moralistic ending of _Cruel intentions_ blown up into a whole movie! beware! why do some film makers like Robert Zemeckis (_Contact_)or Smith and Stark fail to realize that the audience consists of intelligent human beings?