The Savages (2007)
91 %
Reviews Counted: 151 Fresh: 137 Rotten:14 Average Rating: 7.5/10
Consensus:
Thanks to a tender, funny script from director Tamara Jenkins, and fine performances from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney, this film delivers a nuanced, beautifully three-dimensional look at the struggles and comforts of family bonds.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Theatrical Release: Nov 30, 2007 Limited
Box Office: $6,426,953
Synopsis: Director Tamara Jenkins made audiences sit for nearly a decade for her follow-up to the hilarious dark comedy SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, but it's been worth the wait. Like her previous film, THE SAVAGES is a sometimes-funny, sometimes-sad look at family dynamics, but this time around the sense... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Director: Tamara Jenkins
Screenwriter: Tamara Jenkins
Producer: Ted Hope, Anne Carey, Erica Westheimer
Composer: Stephen Trask
Screenwriter: Tamara Jenkins
Producer: Ted Hope, Anne Carey, Erica Westheimer
Composer: Stephen Trask
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Reviews
Comment
Tamara Jenkins's film tackles the difficult subject of facing up to an ageing parent's mental and physical demise with overt sensitivity but no punches are spared.
07/18/08
This film is immensely rewarding and in its own way exceptionally beautiful.
07/18/08
Oddly being marketed as a comedy by its distributor, The Savages is best approached as a drama with an intermittently light touch that's generally more of a curse than a boon.
06/09/08
A wonderful black comedy that has gotten a tad lost in the recent sea of excellent indie pictures.
05/22/08
While writer-director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) lets things get a little mushy towards the end, the film brilliantly portrays a difficult family moment made even more complicated by her characters' overweening narcissism.
05/01/08
The Savages proves there's a rich vein of humor to be mined from the darkest of themes.
04/22/08
Hoffman and Linney bring a credible blend of ease and exasperation to the sibling relations, which show concern and competition in roughly equal measure. [DVD]
04/21/08
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04/03/08
There really doesn't seem to be much of a bright side about a brother and sister who are faced with putting their father in a nursing home, but Jenkins manages to mine humor and heart out of the bleak circumstances.
03/17/08
The Savages is the sort of film that, while ringing with laudable authenticity and an admirable lack of maudlin sentimentality, prefers wallowing in misery to reaching for transformation.
02/28/08
Call me hokey if you want. I just would have liked more heart in there somewhere. But the acting is superb and it's worth seeing just for that. By no means watch this over the holidays but pursue its scholarly merit on safe ground.
02/16/08
Most of all about recovering, about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and plugging on. It also just happens to be, in its small, astutely observed, delicately bittersweet way, one of the best films of the year.
02/08/08
It's billed as a comedy. You may or may not find much to laugh at.
02/07/08
Top Critic
Jenkins' superlative work proves her first film was no fluke; let's hope it doesn't take another nine years to hear from her again.
02/01/08
There are resonant moments of elderly vulnerability and strong acting from Hoffman and Bosco, but Linney's overly familiar exasperated-woman performance and Jenkins' been-there, done-that-better story sink "The Savages.
02/01/08
Screenwriter/director Tamara Jenkins (Slums of Beverly Hills) is smart enough not to try to redeem any of these people — at least not in the traditional, cinematic sense.
01/31/08
Two fine performances, a subject close to all our hearts and a screenplay that manages to be both brilliantly witty and almost unbearably poignant add up to the best family comedy-drama since Little Miss Sunshine.
01/24/08
The pleasures are small but intense and the spell cast in one of the most surprisingly moving films of the year is captivating.
01/24/08
In Tamara Jenkins' brutally frank and occasionally funny look at lives shaped by disappointment and fear, their love for each other binds them through the worst of times.
01/24/08
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