Everyone does solid work with their roles. That relationship is almost incestuous, although Lee never dares to fully delve into it. Meanwhile, the film also glosses over the relationship between Jane and Michael, who are roughly the same age. Why she allows Charles to get away with some of the cruel things he does to the young Michael are confounding. As the family gathers at the old family home, where Jane (Watson in the present, Panattiere in the past) now lives, old feelings are drudged over, and while going through their mother's things, Michael discovers a secret about his mother. This sets up situations and complications to bring everyone together so they can argue and bicker, and of course, eventually reconcile. While on the way to Rhyne, the daughter's graduation party, Charles and Lisa get into a car accident while trying to avoid Christopher, Lisa's nephew.
The film goes back and forth in time, between Michael's childhood and present day. Reynolds stars as as Michael Waechter, the son of a self absorbed intellectual jerk, Charles (Dafoe). After all, it netted a slew of stars - Ryan Reynolds, Emily Watson, Willem Defoe, Hayden Panettiere, Iaon Gruffud, and Julia Roberts. I suspect that the film's script must have looked quite good. It offers nothing new into an already crowded genre. But good direction can't always save a flat script. Dennis Lee's feature length debut, Fireflies in the Garden is a technically well made film. Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale was also a very good film about dysfunctional families, as is Jonathan Demme's new film Rachael Getting Married. Wes Anderson has made dysfunction his specialty. Fireflies in the Garden (2008) **1/2 The problem with movies about dysfunctional families is the same one that spy movies have: they're a dime a dozen, and rarely offer anything new.
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