The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009/Screen Media DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C-
Sometimes
melodrama can work, but too often, it is the genre to fall most into cliché and
the phoniest of traps. Since Crash, the idea has been if you get
enough names, you can get away with weaker and weaker scripts. Rebecca Miller penned the underrated Proof (2005) for Director John Madden,
so why The Private Live of Pippa Lee
(2009) does not work as well is a mystery.
Her first
directorial effort since The Ballad Of
Jack & Rose the same year, Robin Wright plays a woman who is forced to
move to a retirement community when her older husband (Alan Arkin) makes them
move there. She is on the edge of
collapse when a younger man (Keanu Reeves) shows up. But instead of a formula film about them, we
get a larger formula film with too many characters for her to juggle and the
results are sadly all over the place, even when this is intelligent.
Maria
Bello, Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci, Blake Lively, Shirley Knight and Winona
Rider also show up, but instead of building the film and the realism of the
world these characters exist in, it becomes a work in interesting pieces that
don’t usually stand on their own and rarely add up. I can see why the actors signed on, but this
must have looked better on paper.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is softer than a new production should
be with motion blur and some color limits.
We did not see the Blu-ray before this posting top compare. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is also limited in
part by its focus on dialogue, which makes it quiet and the surrounds are not
engaged often. Extras include a feature
length audio commentary track with Miller and Wright, plus on-camera interviews
with Wright, Arkin and Lively.
- Nicholas Sheffo
