It's a rare film that looks as gorgeous as director John Boorman's "Where the Heart Is." The vibrant colors and clever art direction are delicious eye candy. Unfortunately, Boorman and his daughter Telsch wrote a script to accompany these plush visuals, and it's positively atrocious. The end result is like trying to tour an art gallery during a fire drill: Sure, there's plenty to look at, but you still just want to get out of there. Fast.
Dabney Coleman, not exactly breaking any new ground for himself, plays a grouchy, unenlightened demolition magnate who's convinced his artsy children (Uma Thurman, Suzy Amis and David Hewlett) will never make it in the real world. So he throws them out of the mansion and puts them up in a ramshackle house in one of New York's less attractive neighborhoods. But a cruel twist of fate throws the family back together again, with no money, but now equipped with the greater happiness that comes from love and understanding.
The screenplay could have been lifted from any random night of idiotic TV sitcoms and the Boormans dress it up with some of the most precious and highfalutin dialogue this side of a college theater party. It's a groan a minute.
The varied cast members behave as if they were all acting in different movies. Joanna Cassidy screeches and flutters annoyingly as Coleman's flighty wife, while Crispin Glover does his usual beyond-the-fringe number as a fashion designer who pretends to be gay in the hopes of getting ahead. Only Thurman makes a pleasant impression, imparting an ethereal air to her Stevie Nicks-ish character. Almost everyone else, like the film itself, makes you wish you'd just stayed home. James Sanford
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