It Runs in the Family

Rating:
Summary: "The Douglases": Humorless and Toothless Family Drama
Review: I heard this is a light-weight comedy about one family. Surely, it is intended as such, but the laugh comes not so often, and the story is too slow, or the characters are too many. The only unique point is that it features the Douglas family, particularly Michael and Kirk in one film (and as father and son), but that fact doesn't help at all when it takes more than ten minutes (in a roundabout way) to introduce all of them to us. Hey, we (I mean, those fans who would watch this film) all know that Kirk is the father of Michael, so why you take so long before starting things?

Yes, three generations from the Douglas family show up in this film as the "Grombergs" a dysfunctional family whose members just do not how to communicate with each other. Grumpy Kirk Douglas is the center of the family (and the film) while his son Michael Douglas's character faces the crisis of the family (in the shape of the suspected infidelty).

Each member has his/her problems, as this kind of film always show. So, you also see Diana Douglas (Michael's mother) playing against Kirk Douglas while Cameron Douglas (Michael's son) appears as ... er ... Michael's character's son, who is not doing well in university, and got into troubles, one drug-related.

Now, the troubles with "It Runs in the Family" is that the film ALMOST touches the very biting truths about being in a family -- you cannot get away from your children, siblings, or parents no matter what they are, or how they act. You sit through the embarrasing moments of the family's annual gatherings, wishing that this would end soon, and the film tries to show such moments. But what it reveals in the overlong running time is nothing original or truthful to us. One example shows: when a quiet, very introspective boy Rory Culkin (cast as Cameron's younger brother) falls for a girl in school, she must be a wild, goth girl who has a pierce in nose. The film is full of such cliched elements that you can tell who is going to die, and how, before it happens.

I don't think acting is bad, and it is good to see Kirk Douglas after he suffered from a stroke (and he still has the daredevil personality seen in, say, "Doc" in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"). Cameron Douglas is good and looks natural as rebellous college student, and there are some memorable moments from the cast, especially from the dance scene of Diana and Kirk. But after watching this long film, you will remember almost nothing in it, perhaps except the fact that you saw four Douglases in one picture. It sounds harsh to say, but what else can this film be proud of?

Rating:
Summary: "The Douglases": Humorless and Toothless Family Drama
Review: I heard this is a light-weight comedy about one family. Surely, it is intended as such, but the laugh comes not so often, and the story is too slow, or the characters are too many. The only unique point is that it features the Douglas family, particularly Michael and Kirk in one film (and as father and son), but that fact doesn't help at all when it takes more than ten minutes (in a roundabout way) to introduce all of them to us. Hey, we (I mean, those fans who would watch this film) all know that Kirk is the father of Michael, so why you take so long before starting things?

Yes, three generations from the Douglas family show up in this film as the "Grombergs" a dysfunctional family whose members just do not how to communicate with each other. Grumpy Kirk Douglas is the center of the family (and the film) while his son Michael Douglas's character faces the crisis of the family (in the shape of the suspected infidelty).

Each member has his/her problems, as this kind of film always show. So, you also see Diana Douglas (Michael's mother) playing against Kirk Douglas while Cameron Douglas (Michael's son) appears as ... er ... Michael's character's son, who is not doing well in university, and got into troubles, one drug-related.

Now, the troubles with "It Runs in the Family" is that the film ALMOST touches the very biting truths about being in a family -- you cannot get away from your children, siblings, or parents no matter what they are, or how they act. You sit through the embarrasing moments of the family's annual gatherings, wishing that this would end soon, and the film tries to show such moments. But what it reveals in the overlong running time is nothing original or truthful to us. One example shows: when a quiet, very introspective boy Rory Culkin (cast as Cameron's younger brother) falls for a girl in school, she must be a wild, goth girl who has a pierce in nose. The film is full of such cliched elements that you can tell who is going to die, and how, before it happens.

I don't think acting is bad, and it is good to see Kirk Douglas after he suffered from a stroke (and he still has the daredevil personality seen in, say, "Doc" in "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral"). Cameron Douglas is good and looks natural as rebellous college student, and there are some memorable moments from the cast, especially from the dance scene of Diana and Kirk. But after watching this long film, you will remember almost nothing in it, perhaps except the fact that you saw four Douglases in one picture. It sounds harsh to say, but what else can this film be proud of?

Rating:
Summary: Uneven, but worth seeing
Review: I know that Kirk and Michael Douglas had looked for a long time to find a project on which they could collaborate. Frankly, although I think they might have done better; once in awhile it's reasonable to judge success by a different set of criteria.

This film is a study of three generations of a well to do family, and this family's inability to deal openly with years of unspoken conflicts. This certainly isn't the first movie to tackle this subject, and it won't be the last. There isn't a great deal in terms of plot twists, surprises, astonishing performances or writing. It's look and feel are on a par with a high quality made for TV movie. Many of the non family members in the story are not well developed, and don't really contribute very much to the story.

However ... it would be difficult to think of a father and son who have contributed more to the film industry than have Kirk and Michael Douglas, and it is highly unlikely that this pairing will ever be seen again. This is, in and of itself, a good enough reason for me to see this film. But there is something else that this film does extremely well. It depicts the pain of an elderly man who is facing the kind of losses that are to be expected as one ages, and in doing so, Kirk Douglas makes it abundantly clear that he is still a substantial force on screen. I hate to fall back on the old sports analogy, but I am reminded of the last few years that Louis Tiant pitched for the Red Sox. Sure, he was past his prime, yet he was able to offer perspective, experience and a positive mind set that only years in baseball could provide. In other words, his value to the club what about more than statistics. It was about character.

Kirk Douglas invests this film with just this sort of extra ingredient. If you are someone who has paid close attention to American cinema for the last 50 plus years, you understand what I am trying to describe. Whatever its shortcomings; I couldn't have missed this film.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven, but worth seeing
Review: I know that Kirk and Michael Douglas had looked for a long time to find a project on which they could collaborate. Frankly, although I think they might have done better; once in awhile it's reasonable to judge success by a different set of criteria.

This film is a study of three generations of a well to do family, and this family's inability to deal openly with years of unspoken conflicts. This certainly isn't the first movie to tackle this subject, and it won't be the last. There isn't a great deal in terms of plot twists, surprises, astonishing performances or writing. It's look and feel are on a par with a high quality made for TV movie. Many of the non family members in the story are not well developed, and don't really contribute very much to the story.

However ... it would be difficult to think of a father and son who have contributed more to the film industry than have Kirk and Michael Douglas, and it is highly unlikely that this pairing will ever be seen again. This is, in and of itself, a good enough reason for me to see this film. But there is something else that this film does extremely well. It depicts the pain of an elderly man who is facing the kind of losses that are to be expected as one ages, and in doing so, Kirk Douglas makes it abundantly clear that he is still a substantial force on screen. I hate to fall back on the old sports analogy, but I am reminded of the last few years that Louis Tiant pitched for the Red Sox. Sure, he was past his prime, yet he was able to offer perspective, experience and a positive mind set that only years in baseball could provide. In other words, his value to the club what about more than statistics. It was about character.

Kirk Douglas invests this film with just this sort of extra ingredient. If you are someone who has paid close attention to American cinema for the last 50 plus years, you understand what I am trying to describe. Whatever its shortcomings; I couldn't have missed this film.

Rating:
Summary: sloppy, overstuffed family drama
Review: In "It Runs in the Family," real life father and son, Kirk and Michael Douglas, portray a fictional father and son who seem never to have gotten along very well in life. Despite the fact that we know that this filial conflict is what the film is supposed to be about, there is such a profusion of characters and subplots cluttering up the storyline that the central relationship is never as fully developed as it needs to be to make the concept work. I suspect that the fact that the elder Douglas is currently suffering from the debilitating effects of a stroke he had a few years back (resulting in his inability to speak clearly) necessitated this shift away from these two characters for an inordinate amount of the movie's running time. Indeed, if there is one charge to be leveled against Jesse Wigutow's all-over-the-map screenplay, it is that it is clearly trying to do too many things at once - and not doing any of them particularly well, I might add.

Wigutow and director Fred Schepisi have provided us with a dizzying array of characters, some of whom make an impact on the audience and some of whom come across as mere devices to help pad out the enormously overstuffed plot. The multi-generational canvas is made up of Mitchell Gromberg, the curmudgeonly patriarch who seemingly never gave his son the love and encouragement he needed; Alex Gromberg, Mitch's liberal-minded attorney son who resents his father and worries that he may be no better a role model to his own boys than Mitchell was to him; Evelyn Gromberg, the understanding matriarch who has always had to serve as broker and peacemaker between her two feuding "boys;" Rebecca Gromberg, Alex' levelheaded wife who worries (rightfully in one case) that both their children are headed for some kind of major trouble; Asher Gromberg, their pot-pushing, ne'er-do-well son who sure could use some guidance from his hardworking, preoccupied father; and, finally, Eli Gromberg, their eleven-year-old boy who gets beaten up regularly by the rampaging school bullies. Add to this list a bevy of friends, relatives, business associates and other assorted onlookers and hangers-on, few of whom are of any interest to us in the audience, and you have the recipe for one mighty messy and overcooked storyline. "It Runs in the Family" does achieve moments of pathos and power, particularly when it is focusing on the harsh realities of aging and losing a loved one, and the poignancy of time passing, but too often these moments are diluted by soap opera mechanics and an inappropriately slapstick tone (an impromptu, middle-of-the-night "Viking" funeral is particularly ludicrous and egregious in this respect). Just as we are caught up in the problems of one character, we are deflected to those of another whom we could - quite frankly - care less about.

One can't exactly fault the actors for not being to pull this material off. The two Douglases, Bernadette Peters, Diana Douglas and Rory Culkin do what they can with what they've been given. What they really could have used was a more disciplined writer and director to keep the whole damn thing in better focus.

Rating:
Summary: It Runs in the Family!
Review: It was a very enjoyable movie, excellent from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: It Runs in the Family!
Review: It was a very enjoyable movie, excellent from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: A few poignant moments in this cliche-fest
Review: The best thing I can say for this movie is that I was never oppressively bored by it. It had various storylines that kept my interest to varying degrees, but none so poignant as to make the film highly memorable. The most lasting impression is that this is a collection of cliches that largely wastes most of its cast. For one, there's Kirk Douglas, playing a character who would be right at home in GRUMPY OLD MEN 3 if such a film were to be made. One relative newcomer to the big screen represented herein is Michelle Monaghan. She comes the nearest to looking like a refreshing new talent with the potential to hold her own amidst three generations of the Douglas clan. Too bad she's stuck in a role that is the movie's most gratingly oppressive cliche -- a young woman who can't fall for a guy until she's first called him some scum of the Earth, in this case comparing him to "a zoo monkey rolling in its feces". Each movie with such a cliche gnaws away a little more at our hopes that in the real world, unlike in the cinematic one, everyone might be entitled to enough self-respect that she'd have little chance to fall for him after telling him such a thing. By the way, why do movies never have a guy and a girl fall for each other after HE has called HER a "zoo monkey rolling in its feces"? Rhetorical question, I'm afraid. Too bad. Then there is Michael Douglas, playing a stock-character longsuffering husband/father/son. While volunteering at a soup kitchen he is virtually attacked by an agressive seductress in the form of a fellow volunteer. That incident leaves some evidence that will eventually -- you guessed it -- convince his wife that he has had an "affair". His wife, played by Bernadette Peters, is another clicheed character, a cold wife toward her husband as he deals with the turmoil and chaos of his immediate and extended family. She subjects him to "damned if you do and damned if you don't" conditions, berating him for not giving enough attention to his parents' wishes, while at the same time resenting every moment of his attentions that his parents divert away from her. When she discovers evidence of his "affair", her reaction is essentially one we've seen in many other movies before. Insisting she knows all about what happened, his attempts to enlighten her with what really did happen and how he mostly resisted an aggressor are met with a protestation that she doesn't want to hear the details. She insists on banning him from their bed until they seek marriage counseling. Considering that she is ostensibly a counselor herself, it's hard to see how her rigid, no gray area reactions to things could bode well as to how counseling could do much for the couple. One final cliche is one we could only wish were less of a fantasy. It's the cliche of the diminutive schoolboy (played in this case by Rory Culkin) who is tormented by bullies but ultimately musters the courage (Read: miracle) to disperse the whole gang of bullies singlehandedly. The climax of that subplot might be "feel-good" in nature if it had a shred of believability. Someone may fancy the entire movie to be a "feel-good" film. But it is mostly a sardonic vision of a dysfunctional family, with ample cliches thrown in for (good?!?) measure. Still marginally watchable rather than boring. I'm not sure why.

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: This film was listed as a light-hearted comedy, however, there was absolutely NOTHING funny in this entire film. It is about a totally dysfunctional family -- two of the family members die, the son is a drug addict -- I just did not see any humor in this film at all. Actually, I found it to be totally depressing! I certainly would not want someone who is already feeling down to see this movie, it might just send them over the edge.

Rating:
Summary: Woefully Unfocused and INDULGENT
Review: This is simply ridiculously bad, just ridiculous. Many characters are introduced, many storylines are established-- and not ONE is developed satisfactorily. Novice filmmaking from everyone except the actors. No great performances here but all competent. I particularly enjoyed Rory Culkin as Michael Douglas's young son. Culkin provides the film's one genuinely funny moment when he asks a surprising question of his mother (who is concerned he isn't speaking to his parents enough).

It is always nice to see Kirk Douglas still performing and he has great courage to do so. However, giving him foul-mouthed dialogue and dirty jokes- as this film does- is not very dignified. Parents beware: this film may appear to be fairly good natured, but there is an awful lot of 'language' and 'adult themes'.

This is a big ensemble piece, but it doesn't add up to much of anything. This movie wanted to be about so much, but it honestly doesn't end up being about anything.