Inventing the Abbotts (1997)

Summary: JC Holt (Billy Crudup) is obsessed with the Abbotts, the seemingly wealthiest family in the small town of Hayley, Illinois. More specifically, he is obsessed with Lloyd Abbott’s (Will Patton) beautiful daughters, Alice (Joanna Going), Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly), and Pamela (Liv Tyler). His younger brother Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) determines to stay far away from the Abbotts for this very reason, but he is consistently drawn to youngest daughter Pam.

I am of two minds about this movie. It opened with “Undecided”, which is one of my favourite jazz era songs, but it was performed by the Ray Gelato Giants when it should have been the great Ella Fitzgerald.

And that’s the thing about this movie. Right elements in the wrong context.

Ken Hixon’s screenplay, based on Sue Miller’s story, is unbelievably obvious, contrived, and goes on longer than it should. He also wrote City by the Sea, another overblown story, but one I loved because I’m a complete sucker for fathers and sons who say “I love you.”

There’s actually a part where the narrator (Michael Keaton) comes to the realization that “there was nothing especially original about [his] mother”, and the same is true of Hixon and Miller’s story.

Despite the material they were working with, everyone acted the hell out of this thing. Of course, that’s what I’ve always respected and am drawn to the most about Phoenix and Crudup (although he’s never quite caught my eye the way Joaquin has). That’s probably why my memory converted Crudup to Phoenix in The Hi-Lo Country. Because they just act the hell out of everything they are given, completely regardless of everything save the craft.

I was just about to call them actor’s actors, but I’m not sure what that would mean. If anything, they are both acting’s actors and audience’s actors because it’s perhaps loyalty to the art as well as the viewer that they make something so memorable out of something so forgettable.

Plus I think they really could pass for brothers.

I’d give the credit to director Pat O’Connor, but she hasn’t earned it. Her Circle of Friends was lovely, but her Sweet November was one of the most awful things I’ve ever seen. Just thinking about it now makes me want to up-chuck. Unlike Schumacher yesterday, I don’t think the shooting script has that much influence of the quality of O’Connor’s work. I just don’t think she understands people all that well. You need to, though, to tell a story in a way that it will connect with the audience.

Nit-picky point: They couldn’t get a better match for Phoenix than Keaton? That’s not what Phoenix sounds like now, eight years later, and it’s not what he will sound like however many more years down the line the narration is supposed to take place. Surely there must be someone else with similar delivery to Phoenix’s Doug, if not his accent. Keaton’s line readings just bugged me. They came across as lazy.

As always, I raise my glass to the dearly departed Michael Kamen, whose wonderfully evocative score had me tearing up over moments that my mind railed against. Objectively, they weren’t that good, but a well-done scene between Phoenix and the talented and beautiful Tyler or Phoenix and Crudup with Kamen’s string section swelling in the background could get to anyone.

If I could somehow discount the direction, the plot, and Keaton, this movie would get an A without hesitation. But I can’t. B