Rating: R
Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 10/06/2006(USA
Release Date: 05/01/2007
SubTitles: English/Espanol
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD5.1/DDS2.0
Run Time: 137 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Adult Humor, Profanity
Distributor/Studio: New Line Home Video
Oscar-nominated filmmaker
Todd Field teams with novelist
Tom Perrotta to adapt
Perrotta's acclaimed novel concerning the suburban malaise experienced by a handful of small-town individuals whose intersecting lives converge in a variety of surprising, and sometimes ominous, ways.
Kate Winslet,
Jennifer Connelly, and
Patrick Wilson star in a cinematic adaptation that doesn't aim so much to simply reproduce the book for the screen as it does to re-imagine the written word by exploring new possibilities for the characters and situations originally presented in
Perrotta's 2004 best-seller.
Sarah (
Winslet) is a suburban outsider who, unlike the other playground moms, isn't afraid to approach the dreamy but long-absent father whom smitten housewives have taken to calling the "Prom King." Long days at the local community pool with their respective children soon find
Sarah becoming acquainted with local husband and father
Brad (
Patrick Wilson) -- who seems to share in her seething discontentment with life in their quaint commuter town. An English literature major who never envisioned a fate as a soccer mom,
Sarah has a growing dissatisfaction with her successful husband (
Gregg Edelman) that parallels
Brad's increasing frustration with his inability to pass the bar and connect with his wife,
Kathy (
Jennifer Connelly), a successful
documentary filmmaker. It's not long before the dejected pair is meeting for a series of illicit afternoon trysts as their unsuspecting spouses work and their children lie quietly napping. Meanwhile, after the community is riled by the return of a convicted sex offender (
Jackie Earle Haley) who leaves the concerned parents scrambling to protect their young ones, an attempt made by
Sarah and
Brad to legitimize their clandestine relationship by dining together with their respective spouses begins to awaken
Kathy's suspicions about the fidelity of her husband.
~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
