Customer Reviews

Inventing the Abbotts (Widescreen)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Saw this movie because it had Michael Sutton from GH in it. Sad to say Steve had no lines but his part is memerable. Great movie, the whole family will enjoy it. I can honestly say that you can watch it more than once because the plot is written well and the actors are wonderful.

I saw this movie five years ago when I was in Jamaica. The movie "Inventing the Abbotts" focuses on the typical 1950s family that rose to the American dream of making it big living in the suburbs. The Abbots, a wealthy manufacturing family, maintained the image of family values. Beneath the surface, the older sister had to marry because she was two months pregnant. And the younger sister was a [promiscuous girl] who was sent to a convent. Pam, the middle, is stuck in the middle. She lives between her family's expectations and her love for Doug Holt. Jacey, the older brother, sleeps with the older and younger Abbott sisters to get back at the father for tarnishing the mother's reputation. Doug's love for Pam is unconditional. Pam runs away because she is afraid of what others are thinking.
The movie was a good drama because it gave an in-depth look of America post-WW2. The dream that was supposedly a nightmare for both the elite and the working class. Each is struggling with the self, the community, and society.

Few movies I've seen provide, 7 years after its making, a retrospective of great actors and actresses in the make. Just watch the movie and then fish for recent works with each of those young talents.

From Crudup to Joaquin to Tyler to Going to Jenniffer Connelly - what we see in Inventing the Abbotts is an amazing set of performers reaching to stardoom. I believe the film should be classified as mandatory in acting schools.

For the rest, I believe this script is as close to reality as it can get. A small town, a wealthy family, a classic rich/poor idiosyncratic drama, false assumptions which could ruin lives, hard working single parents, young daughters struggling with the coming of age, ... all quite well integrated into a movie which is delightful to see and to call your attention for preemptive judgement.

Joanna Going, Liv Tyler and Jenniffer Connelly are absolutely remarkable and beautiful. Yet the prize goes to Joaquin, for his amazing performance.

I love this movie with passion. It has everything that a movie could possibly need it has romance, fighting, disease, death, and everything in between. Even though it is something like a soap opera it is still a beautiful story in my mind I mean when you have all those elements it is just a great movie. The story is that two families from different sides of the tracks romance each other. Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) and Pam (Liv Tyler) romance each other through the entire movie but they keep breaking up so we never know whether or not they will end up together in the end. Now Jacey (Billy Crudup) Doug's brother romances Elinor (Jennifer Connelly) and Alice (Joanna Going) and we never know if he will ever grow up. If I give away anymore information other than that it will completley ruin the movie for you so I recommend this to all people out there who are over the age of 14. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!!

A tremendous film! Liv Tyler is outstanding! Jocquain is terrific!!! This is a really good story... unusual, well-done. There is a lot going on behind the main plot. A son's inability to accept the hand that life has dealt him. His desire for revenge against a man who has not wronged him. Three daughters' alternate attempts at dealing with an overbearing father and the pressure of wealth and social position. And, a mother's relationship with her sons. Just a damn fine film.

This is a very nice movie for it's gender.
If you are looking for Indipendence day kind of movie, don't rent this, but I think the cover is self explanatory.

This movie has so much potential and to tell you the truth when it's on T.v or when I feel like watching something familiar it is still something I watch. The problem is that with so much potential the story fails. The story loses focus as to what the brothers wanted in the first place, especially JC played by Billy Crudup.
All of the actors are great, but Jennifer Connelly made the movies worth watching she draws the audience with her mishievous and tempetous Eleanor. If she was ever cast as a villain she would be the pitch perfect but so far in her career this is as close as she gets to playing bad and she does with such a subtle hint of seduction that as an audience member it is mindboggling when the writer director whoever decided to yank her character 30 minutes in. A shame a true shame.
What we are left with is a skeleton of a movie till the end when Joaquin Phoenix's character Doug returns to his primary motivation and the story gets back on track.
This movie isn't bad. IT is entertaining and watchable but is is so disappointing to think what could have been/\.

I only really saw this movie was because Billy Crudup is in it....But i was very Pleased with the movie,its a beautiful film i loved it very much not just cause Billy Is in it, he is really amazing actor also one of God's Gift to Woman!!! You will love it i promise you that!!!!

I liked it. Very emotional. I love Joaquin and I do think Jennifer is a great actress. Very great look at life in that era.

Strange as it may sound, I only realized how much I loved this movie when I watched it for the second time. Probably because the first time I was too much focused on how pretty those girls were and which one of them was the sexiest -- I mean, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Connelly and Joanna Going, not Pamela, Eleonor and Alice, respectively. Watching it the second time gave me a chance to really appreciate a very good screenplay (based on a great novel by Sue Miller and enhanced by a perfect narration by Michael Keaton) as well as the finest performance of pretty much the whole cast, especially Baker and Connelly. As for Liv Tyler, I personally prefer her acting in this movie than in the overrated "Stealing Beauty" which was filmed one year earlier. There's a bunch of memorable scenes and lines, but I think the best ones must be Jennifer Connelly's "hi Doug" and Kathy Baker's "'no matter what' kind of love".... All in all, "Inventing the Abbotts" deserves a high place in the library of coming-of-age movies. I would however recommend a somehow related (and maybe better) one -- "Stealing Home", with Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster.