Stumbles in a familiar way: It crams in so many family dysfunctions and plot crises in search of cathartic impact that credibility is stretched to the breaking point.
Comment
10/16/08
Lifelines (2009)
63
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:16
Fresh:10
Rotten:6
Average Rating:5.6/10
Theatrical Release:Apr 3, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: The Bernsteins are a family coming apart at the seams in this caustic comedy that portrays suburbia at the brink. Enter Dr. Livingston, a therapist who clears the way for their backlog of secrets... [More]
Starring: Jane Adams, Josh Pais, Robbie Sublett, Dreama Walker
Director: Rob Margolies
Reviews for Lifelines
1 - 16 (sorted by rotten rating)
Top CriticLifelines pitches its tone of suburban purgatory early, with nerve-wrecked matriarch Nancy staring at the camera while sing-songy yearning for a rope to hang herself with.
03/30/09
Most of the movie is merely excruciating, until a late revelation elevates it into the realm of the sublimely ludicrous.
04/01/09
Lifelines is an insufferably over-familiar take on angst in affluent suburbia.
04/23/09
Top CriticWritten and directed by Rob Margolies, Lifelines starts promisingly, but soon gives way to a compressed, schematic psychodrama endemic.
04/03/09
The film's befuddling direction and tone, queasy HD interiors, and tin-eared, often preposterous, screenplay prove disastrous.
04/01/09
Lifelines is a tiny movie, made for $385,000, but it strikes enough strange chords to make it resonate.
04/03/09
A refreshingly honest, intelligent and captivating drama brimming with warmth, tenderness and razor-sharp humor.
04/02/09
...a surprising, downright gripping drama revolving around a seriously dysfunctional family.
12/14/08
A resoundingly affecting and emotionally cathartic family drama. Lingers and stirs in the memory long after the end credits have rolled.
06/30/08
The story produces a gamut of emotions from comic to tragic. This film is touching and occasionally powerful. If one can get by the early negative characterizations, it eventually rewards the viewer.
01/14/09
One of the most exquisite images on screen this year was the lovely face of the brilliantly talented Jane Adams, who plays the mother of a profoundly dysfunctional family.
03/30/09
Although its really not much more than a 94 minute therapy session for the dysfunctional family from hell, this psycho-dramedy does have something going for it, with several nicely etched performances and some pungent scenes.
04/27/09
The first hour of "Lifelines" (AKA Wherever You Are) is as powerful as any movie I've seen in a long time.
02/08/09
Terrific performances rescue it, from Adams' wounded exhaustion to Pais's comical confusion and Walker's furious defiance, all hurled against Morton's patient 'listening' and advice.
06/11/09
Coming to grips with the sin of repression.
02/25/09
1 - 16 (sorted by rotten rating)
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