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Inventing the Abbotts Customer Reviews (4 - 6 of 13 Reviews)

Love this movie
I really enjoyed this movie. IT is a little different, but it is a really good story and lesson about just being who you are and forget what everyone else has or doesn't have.

steve
Only reason I saw this film was for Michael Sutton. He plays the character named Steve.
Very good movie!

A rare love story with plot twists
Based on a rather depressing short story, this is the only movie I've seen which I can honestly say is better than the book it's based on. It still surprises me that the critics weren't more impressed with it than they were.

Although Inventing the Abbotts is centered on two well-treaded themes - love across a class divide and bad blood between families - it takes enough of a new approach to avoid cliches. For one thing, the animosity between the rich Abbotts and the working-class Holts is selective, with varying degrees of friendship and respect between certain members of each family showing through alongside the bitterness between others. The exact cause of that bitterness, centered on a long-ago business deal between the two families' fathers, is a combination of mystery and misinformation to the main character, Doug (Joaquim Phoenix). The resolution of that mystery plays out alongside Doug's changing relationship with the Abbotts' youngest daughter, Pamela (Liv Tyler) throughout the film, thus preventing the forbidden-love motif from becoming overbearing.

But the movie does remain a love story at heart, and Phoenix and Tyler are remarkably well-suited to the task. (They apparently were a real-life item for some time after filming - and the sincerity shows.) Complicating the picture are Doug's bitter, jealous elder brother Jaycee (Billy Crudup), who sows discord among both families throughout the film; Pamela's troubled relationship with her sisters and parents; and the hazards of growing up in general. In keeping with the avoidance of stereotypes and cliches, character development is strong almost across the board. The Holts' relative poverty is neither romanticized nor used exploitatively; and if the Abbotts prove that money can't buy happiness, neither are they made out to be shallow or heartless.

The 1950s setting is painstakingly executed as well, featuring a Smithsonian-worthy collection of period appliances, furniture and other everyday items (not to mention an authentic Greyhound bus). The lack of any racial diversity or an overtly political message about that era's injustices might be of some concern to the sensitivities of the politically correct, but the film does in fact address some such concerns (particuarlry the oppression of women) in a subtle but effective fashion.

For my money, this is perhaps the most underrated movie of the 1990s. Buy it while it's available!

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