Good movie but grossly overrated

The first must-see film of the year.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I'm not sure how to feel about this movie. As you probably know, Meg Ryan plays an alcoholic mother of two with a pilot for a husband. The husband, in this case, is played by Andy Garcia. Now, while watching this movie, I hated Garcia at first but really grew to like him. I now really like Andy Garcia. I really hated Meg Ryan's performance in this movie. I didn't understand who she was at all. And maybe her character didn't either. Either way, this movie is slow, and in trying to be instructive - instructive about the horrors and difficulties of alcoholism and the dangerous enabling of co-dependence - comes off as didactic. Movies really shouldn't be didactic. Don't know what didactic means? Maybe I don't either. Nevertheless, I don't think this is a great movie, or even a good one. Maybe it's an okay one. It takes place in San Francisco, which is cool. A lot of movies take place in San Francisco, though.

I really hated this film. I quite liked the beginning when Meg Ryan descended from bubbly to downright alcoholic but then the rest of the film was just completely lost on me. First and foremost, I find it a failure in the script that the story focused entirely on the relationship between the two grown ups and neglected the children. Personally, I think this would have been the more interesting story. But secondly, I just didn't get what Garcia's character was supposed to have done wrong. I honestly didn't although I was prepared to. So he may have been a macho but I saw him as being portrayed as supportive and a victim of her alcoholism just as the rest of the family. Why he should be partly responsible for it is beyond me as it was never properly explained.

I have to disagree with the critics once again. This was nothing more than a below average movie. It might have deserved a rating a little higher than 2 stars, but the ending definitely ruined whatever good was seen in the movie beforehand. I found the script was too simplistic, and the acting nothing more than average (even though I am a huge Meg Ryan fan). Andy Garcia on the other hand was totally miss-cast for the role in my opinion (come on critics, before giving up all those stars, can't you imagine the acting in such a movie by let's say... Merryl Streep and William Hurt? Just think about it... The general public on IMDb had much more sense and gave it a lower average score than the critics).This is a film with no real emotions in my opinion. We never really get the feel of the relationship between Ryan and Garcia in the beginning. We never really get to sympathize or feel for the characters as the movie moves along. None of it ever seems real... and everything seems too obvious. In order to compensate for this, the movie resolves itself in the typically Hollywoodian feel-good manner. The film is based on the currently very much in vogue culture of permissiveness; everybody can do anything and it's OK: the wife can trash a car parked on the curb and that's OK, the kids can half demolish the house, that's OK, etc. How very typical of the '68 generation. Furthermore, building on this concept, the film shows how it is OK to be weak, positive to be a loser, but if you are strong, have values and principles, live according to a set of rules, you are out, almost as if you where sick, you have to be 'healed' so that you too can become a loser... How politically correct can you get? No, definitely not for me...

Hey.....if I had hunky Andy Garcia all over me, hugging and kissing me, I wouldn't be drinking booze! I'd be doing other things. He looks absolutely gorgeous in this film. As I watched the movie, I kept thinking that Meg's character is one lucky lady! She was married to the perfect guy--macho and sensitive at the same time with a respectable career, providing her with an upper-middle class life. And he was devoted to her. He actually loved her. But she never seemed to appreciate his love. If that's "co-dependence," most women would take it in an instant! Comedian Al Franken, who co-wrote this film, based it on his own marriage.