The laughs suddenly cease after a brutal rape sequence, and Dunne desperately and vainly tries to re-work the remainder of the movie as a metaphysical coming-of-age story.
Comment
09/20/07
Fierce People (2007)
26
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:43
Fresh:11
Rotten:32
Average Rating:4.7/10
Consensus: Fierce People's premise of a teenager studying rich people like animals is grating and self-satisfied, and Anton Yelchin's smug performance makes the film even harder to agree with.
Theatrical Release:Sep 7, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: A coming-of-age story about the perils of privilege, Lions Gate Films’ FIERCE PEOPLE examines the deceit and betrayal that erupts when a working-class mother and her son move to a wealthy “country... [More]
Starring: Diane Lane, Anton Yelchin, Donald Sutherland, Kristen Stewart
Director: Griffin Dunne
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Reviews for Fierce People
What a bad trip.
09/06/07
Overall, it's an enjoyable effort, but not a positive triumph.
09/04/07
Top CriticMiscalculated at every level, it's a vacant drama full of ineptly drawn characters.
10/10/07
Dunne weighs down a light social satire with a ponderous anthropological analogy.
05/22/06
There is little in life sadder to see than a film that thinks it has a great deal to say of a revelatory or profound nature, but doesn't
09/19/07
Watching the idle rich toy with people can only go so far, then you want more depth and this doesn't have it.
10/12/07
Quickly gets bogged down in Anton Yelchin's tendency to be whiny and annoying in his attempts to be clever or cute.
09/04/07
It’s possible, I suppose, that Dunne and Wittenborn were so intent on excoriating the well-to-do that they conceived of this entire movie as an act of self-flagellation. In which case, they should rest assured that no one stands to make a dime from it.
09/13/07
Not even the always reliable Diane Lane can save this one.
09/07/07
Fierce People, for all its ambitions, is ultimately a little too discombobulated to be truly fierce.
09/14/07
Griffin Dunne and Dirk Wittenborn think they’re pretty clever.
09/15/07
Rarely has self-pity become so monotonous so quickly.
09/21/07
Too bad this wasn't made twenty-five years ago, when it still had a chance of being accepted by the masses because it was quirky.
09/07/07
When F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked that the rich “are different from you and me,” he might have been thinking of someone like the moody billionaire from Fierce People.
09/07/07
Top CriticOverplotting and a particularly ugly turn make this adaptation of Dirk Wittenborn's novel less a meditation on how the rich are different than a bland coming-of-age procedural.
09/20/07
Top CriticDirector Griffin Dunne, working from Dirk Wittenborn's adaptation of his own novel, pounds away at the analogy between the inherent cruelty of the tribal rituals of the Iskanani and those of the well-heeled.
12/03/07
Top CriticThe analogies drawn between the Ishkanani and the Osborne social circle come off as insufferably precious, rather than thoughtful.
09/07/07
Fierce People is based on a forced premise: the idea that a family of super-rich New Jersey eccentrics is like a tribe to be studied anthropologically. None of the characters resembles any creature you'd discover in nature, however.
09/06/07
Top CriticWhile not as interesting a ride as advertised, the movie does keep one from falling asleep.
09/07/07
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