Ang Lee's adaptation of a 1994 novel by Rick Moody, set in John Cheever country at Thanksgiving, with the ice outdoors outweighing even that in the cocktail glasses. The view of the people -- alienation as a spectator sport -- is no less aloof than in the filmmaker's Jane Austen adaptation, Sense and Sensibility, although these ones occupy a period only as long ago as the Watergate investigation. The detachment, together with the hawk-eyed scrutiny and fastidious documentation, yields some dispassionate and often disdainful funny stuff, but it comes up short in areas of deeper emotion. We are left with a lot of tasty bits that don't add up to much: the inhibited prep schooler making an amorous advance on a foxy classmate ("If you liked Notes from the Underground, you'll love The Idiot"); the extracurricular brass band belching out "The Morning After" (a/k/a Love Theme from The Poseidon Adventure) while the triangle player peers at the patch of bare skin down the pants of the girl trombonist in front of him; the harried mother making a stab at weaning her destructive younger son away from firecrackers and onto a bullwhip; a sexually adventuresome fourteen-year-old girl donning a rubber Nixon mask for a makeout session with her boyfriend, and the girl's father, walking in on them, having once again to abandon his goal of being a cool parent and settle for being a horse's ass ("I'm not interested in your smart remarks right now, young lady"). That sort of thing. A blend of the dated and the timeless, heavier on the dated in the final tally, and of no great moment. The cast -- Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Jamey Sheridan, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood -- must be content to be cannon fodder. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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