People are voting emotionally.

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Life during wartime seems to attempt to make you forget there was a movie before it, I am of course referring to "Happiness",wonderful actors such and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jane Adams have been replaced by nearly unlikable actors that strain to meet the standard and fall short. To avoid spoilers I'll stay away from the plot, but I have to address that I was shocked by how flat the writing is, and how stale the dialog becomes after only a minute or so. This was difficult to watch, because of how much respect I have for Todd Solondz after I first watched Happiness. It seems that this effort by Solondz was forced, like he didn't want to make this movie, if this effort was genuine than I apologize to him in advance for the following, this is not a very good movie. In closing, I probably won't watch this movie again, but that wont stop me from watching Todd Solondz's earlier, better movies. But don't let this review stop you from watching Life During Wartime, as I always say to each his own.

"People can't help it if they're monsters." – Bill (Life During Wartime) Director Todd Solondz takes the various dysfunctional characters of his earlier film, "Happiness", recasts them, and places them in "Life During Wartime". This facial reshuffling then becomes an enquiry on Solondz's part: have these people changed? Are major personality or life changes even possible? How contingent is human behaviour? Can we reverse the scars left by the unbroken causal chains each human being finds themselves bound to?"Happiness" was a jet black comedy which jumped from paedophilia to suicide to masturbation to divorce to murder, deftly hopping from taboo to taboo with a kind of soul crushing cruelty. For Solondz, everything is a masquerade, humans are petty, pathetic and cruel, and every good deed merely masks something horrible at worst, hypocritical at best.With "Wartime" Solondz tries to recapture the cringe comedy and satirical edge of "Happiness", but mostly fails; we're now desensitized to his particular brand of sensationalism. What we're left with, then, is Solondz's clunky message: the past scars the future, Solondz says, but all should be forgiven, lest a cycle of animosity, hate, fear and torment be perpetuated. The film then aligns these themes to the events of September the 11th; America as a nation should forgive those who abuse her, as those upon whom pain is inflicted in the film should forgive their tormentors, or themselves if necessary. It's all very reductive, but far from the misanthropy which critics of Solodnz often accuse him of spouting. If anything, Solondz's a jaded idealist, his characters all looking for a way out of the rut he keeps digging them deeper into.7/10 – Worth one viewing.

"Happiness" was a funny yet very disturbing film. It's a very good film but one I can't see too often since some scenes are too weird. I wanted to see the follow up to that film, hoping it would be as funny, sad and chilling. "Life during Wartime" is quite weak. Having Charlotte Rampling in a small part did not help. The story took a long time to get going and then it was over too soon without creating any interest in the characters nor the storyline. All the actors in the new film were much paler than the ones playing the same parts in "Happiness". The only appealing one was Shirley Henderson playing Joy (even if I missed Jane Adams dearly). The one playing Trish was nowhere near as good as the original actress, but the part was not as funny either. Why make a follow up movie without the original cast? It would have been great to see them having aged like their characters. I suppose the actors from Happiness didn't like the script for "Life during Wartime"!

Movies directed like this should be injected with a small dosage of depth and purpose, so as to let viewers find the meaning of the movie themselves as supposed to being hit in the face with the same "meaningful" messages time after time.Pretending, becoming a man, forgiving and forgetting, these are all points of interest thrown about the film with all the subtly and grace of a blunt axe. These concepts are deep and could have been put of as so if done differently but alas, they were not and so you are now looking at a weak, watered down, and pretentious version of the Coen brothers movie "A Serious Man" which, while odd and somewhat awkward, understands subtly.The acting was not "bad", I actually think the whole cast did quite well considering what they had to do. How can a little boy swearing at random and speaking about forgiveness in such a tone as he did be considered believable? How can a mother talk about "getting wet" to her son seem like a real mother? Granted, mothers have moments of being inappropriate, but come now, let's not push it.Perhaps I am missing something and this is a good film, but I left this movie thinking nothing but, "Shocking and forward, but not artistic and certainly not deep."