Rating: R
Genre:
Comedy Drama
Theatrical Release: 11/28/2007(USA
Release Date: 04/22/2008
SubTitles: English/Espanol/French
Dubbed: English/Espanol
Sound: DD5.1/DDS
Run Time: 114 Minutes
Flags: Adult Situations, Not For Children, Profanity, Sexual Situations
Distributor/Studio: 20th Century Fox
A pair of siblings are forced to set aside their discomfort with one another for the sake of their father in this low-key
comedy drama from writer/director
Tamara Jenkins.
Wendy Savage (
Laura Linney) is a struggling playwright living in New York City who works a day job to support herself and can't shake the feeling that she's failed as an artist.
Wendy isn't especially happy about her love life either, gaining little self-esteem from her on-and-off affair with oversexed, married neighbor
Larry (
Peter Friedman).
Wendy's anxieties about her writing career are intensified by the success of her brother,
Jon (
Philip Seymour Hoffman), who teaches theater history at a college in Buffalo, NY, and has published a number of books. While
Jon's life seems fine on the surface, a case of writer's block has stalled work on his latest project, and he's deeply upset that his girlfriend is soon to leave the United States to return to her native Poland.
Wendy and
Jon don't get along and prefer not to see one another, but an unfortunate circumstance brings them together -- their father,
Lenny Savage (
Philip Bosco). Elderly
Lenny has began showing signs of dementia, and shortly after he takes to smearing his feces on the walls of his Arizona home, his ailing long-term girlfriend suddenly dies.
Wendy and
Jon have little choice but to fly to Arizona and see what can be done for
Lenny, but their long-simmering animosity makes it hard for them to deal with the realities of
Lenny's condition.
The Savages received its world premiere at the
2007 Sundance Film Festival.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
;)
