Considering personal history, a movie about an intelligent but neurotic, unstable, and likely-alcoholic mother has the potential to cut right to my heart.  Add to that a cast including Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and John Turturro, and it sounds like a guaranteed recipe for success.  Sadly, I found this film to be utterly lacking and heavy-handed.

Yes, Kidman does a rather admirable job as a writer who vacillates wildly between a doting mother and a spiteful harpy, as does Jennifer Jason Leigh as her sister, engaged to Jack Black.  Black is an unemployed musician who spends his free time painting abstracts and writing letters to music magazines.  He, and much of the script, are the weakest links in the chain of this movie.

In some ways the two sisters would have made a much better story on their own, as their relationship is a wonder of anger and co-dependency and betrayals minor or major.  Both spend tremendous energy struggling to gain the approval of the other half the time, and to prove their superiority to the other in typical sibling rivalry fashion in the other.  Instead the film suffers from an erratic, irritating, and stale performance from Black.  It also suffers from “trailer syndrome,” where all the best or funniest lines of dialogue are revealed in the movie trailer.  In fact, most of the plot point were at least alluded to in the trailer I saw, so the actual movie provided very few surprises.

Given more to work with, I believe this could have been a tremendous movie.  Jack Black aside, the cast is strong (including Zane Pais as Kidman’s 12-year-old son Claude, who suffers through his mother’s erratic changes of mood and direction).  In fact, a closer and more isolated dissection of their relationship would have made for a more rewarding film as well.  Instead, after watching it, I am left wondering exactly what I missed in this movie that other reviewers singing its praises saw.