Boring

Beautiful, moving film.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Father got dementia and had to be removed out because his girlfriend died. Because of this, a brother and a sister, who used to compete with each other and do not have a taste for each other, reunited to take care of their father. Both of them were brought up by their abusive father so both has some twists in their mind. The sister is not calming, over lust, while the brother is bad tempered too.They found more about each other's life when taking care of his father. They mocked each other at first and do not understand, make fun of the weakness of the other when they find their real life, but both of them are trying their best to take care of their father, and at the end they learned to appreciate each other. The brother appreciates the sister's play, despite that she was rejected. The sister hopes the best of the brothers conference at Poland, where his girlfriend lives.although at the end their father died, and 'this is it', their relationship revives.

What a disappointment this movie is. Nothing about it is believable. None of the angst the characters are supposed to be experiencing rings true at all, nor does their sudden concern for their father's welfare after a lifetime of abuse and estrangement. The only thing that is at all believable is the bickering between the two siblings, and that does not make for a meaningful or entertaining movie-watching experience.I come from a dysfunctional family myself, also with dying or recently dead parents, and I resent the cavalier way Tamara Jenkins turns the situation into a cheesy soap opera with a happy ending. There can be no happy endings in families like that. The Savages is cheap (and I don't mean low-budget), pretentious, and annoying.

In Sun City, Arizona, the grumpy Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco) has dementia and lives with his mate Doris Metzger (Rosemary Murphy). His son Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a professor of drama in Buffalo that is writing a book about Bertold Brecht. His daughter Wendy (Laura Linney) is a thirty-nine year-old freelancer and aspirant writer of screenplays for theater that lives in New York and has an affair with the middle-aged married man Larry (Peter Friedman). Wendy and Jon are estranged from their abusive father but when Doris dies, the siblings travel to the funeral and are surprised by her family that informs that Lenny must leave the house. Wendy and Jon bring Lenny to Buffalo and leave him in a nursing home. Along the days, they visit their father and try to improve his life."The Savages" is a pointless, unpleasant and bitter drama of dementia, family responsibilities and end of life. The performance of the charming Laura Linney and the outstanding Philip Seymour Hoffman are top-notch but the subject of this film is not attractive and Philip Bosco performs a non-charismatic character and when he dies in the end, the viewer feels absolute indifference. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "A Família Savage" ("The Savage Family")

This is one of those ostentatiously quiet films and how much you enjoy it will depend greatly on how much you appreciate the lovely and talented Laura Linney.The crux of the story involves Wendy and John Savage (Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman), two prematurely middle-aged siblings suddenly forced to care for their somewhat decrepit and dementia-ridden father (Philip Bosco) after years and years of separation and silence. The plot is really just an excuse, though, to put Wendy and John on display as examples of early 21st century pseudo-adulthood.Wendy is a 39 year old woman with a Masters degree in Fine Arts who still works as a temp, shuttling from one cubicle to another to pay the bills while she fancies her real destiny is to be a playwright. She doesn't like the fact that her situation doesn't reflect what she hopes her talent is, so she self-medicates and lies to others and herself about how her life is going. She's also having an affair with a married man, but she loves his dog far more than she cares about him.John is a 42 year old literature professor who teaches class at a small college in Buffalo and is trying to write a book on Bertolt Brecht. He's completely alienated from his own feelings and lives like he's isolated from the rest of the world. His girlfriend of several years is having to move back to Poland because her visa has expired. She wants to marry John but he refuses, telling Wendy it's because he's afraid she wouldn't be able to get a job in Buffalo. The one thing John does have is his belief that he's smarter than his sister and he doesn't react well when Wendy tells him she got a Guggenheim grant, something he's tried repeatedly to get and failed.The movie is almost entirely focused on how these two people handle this particular situation at this particular point in their lives. It never really goes into their past and how and why Wendy and John got to be the way they are. It never details the extent or nature of their poor relationship with their father. There's only an offhand reference to their mother, and we get only the smallest glimpse of how Wendy and John actually function in the world.The Savages is a comedy but not one that's trying to make anyone laugh that hard. It's almost Seinfeldian in its focus on the humor of the uncomfortable, the awkward and the embarrassing. There's not a lot of "ha ha" funny stuff in the film. It's more like real life where God has written a few more gags into the script than normal.Linney has the biggest role and the most fully realized character and if you enjoy watching her perform, The Savages is quite pleasant. Hoffman is good, but he doesn't have much to do and while the story of grown kids having to take care of their ailing father and reconnect with him has some emotional kick, it never gives you enough about them and their relationship to make you care that much. The film admirably resists being too pretentious, but slides into being too ordinary.Linney is very good, though, and if that sounds like enough for you, The Savages won't be disappointing.