GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

ClassyWas Excellent, smart action film.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

foleymichael60 I went to see this piece of crap at a really nice art-house in Newton MA and I couldn't believe how ridiculously bad this film is.Think plan 9 From Outer Space and if you have seen this POS and think not shame on you because films are suppose make you care in some way or another and I can think of nothing less important than the creeps bums and assholes depicted in this film and not very well depicted at that.One dimensional sets crappy creepy dialog stupid plot: it is all there.The last time I laughed at a funeral scene was when I saw Cat Ballou and it was meant to be funny but not this one.I was surprised to find out that it was supposed to be touching.Touch this morons!

blork0 an interesting adaptation of the play, of course there is much lost in the translation (pacing etc.) but the performances are brilliant especially Chazz Palminteri who i believe gives his best performance ever as phil a violent talentless wannabe actor who is desperately seeking meaning to his life in the soulless city of LA. Penn is also good as the slimeball with the heart of...slightly less slime quality material. Like Phil he is becoming more and more disenchanted with existence. All the characters seem to have a problem with cocaine and an inability to love. (is there a correlation?)Kevin Spacey is fun as himself and Meg Ryan is surprisingly not as "herself" as usual as a fading single mother party girl who gives fellatio to celebrities in moving vehicles...wacky. the movie is a great ensemble experiment and there are a million great moments that warrant it for multiple viewings.

ascott-19 Despite having an all-star cast, this is one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. The acting is terrible and the dialog is almost as bad. Sean Penn's performance almost made me wince with empathy for a good actor doing his worst performance. Kevin Spacey and Meg Ryan tried hard with the material, but they couldn't resurrect the script. I don't know if the real problem was the acting or the script or the director, but it all added up to a waste of time. I see that the other reviewer thought it was a great movie. Either tastes are really different or someone is doing some promotion. I rate this movie better than a made-for-TV-movie (barely). My wife gave up and went to bed. To give you a reading on my tastes, I agree with Ebert and Roeper ~80% of the time.

lornespry For many movie fans who truly love the art of film, a good screenplay is the jeweled movement on which marvelous films turn and pivot. They remain with you as memorable experiences, be they like Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Gandhi, or The Maltese Falcon. The genre hardly matters; good screen play is an essential in even the action movie. Too bad so much mediocre screen writing abounds when good talent seems so obtainable.'Hurlyburly' was adapted from the play for the screen by the author. In a word, it is brilliant. The acting is superb in every character, and the casting was perfect. Once again, Sean Penn gives a performance that is indicative of his paramount position as one of the very best actors of his generation — a superlative star given any generation.I can just imagine that this film has made some pretty bad friends in some quarters — and in both genders. There is no hiding the fact that this sort of world exists to some extent anywhere a group of hedonistic, single males (or men who think that they are still single) gather to hang out, relax or party. But a viewer will be missing the point if she/he thinks that 's all there is — gratuitous, reckless living. Marshall McLuan's theory of amputation kept occurring to me after watching the film — the idea that with each additional machine in our culture we are being cut off from our humanity. This is a psychodrama that does not resort to the unspoken, latent trauma that lurks in the past to trouble our characters. Something in Eddie is more truncated than broken, and although he doesn't know what it is, he is intensely aware that it is causing him despair, loneliness and pain. The drugs maybe both cause and effect. Beyond the pain itself, he is completely unsure about what he thinks he is supposed to feel. Some considerable irony floats around this issue, and to the director's credit it is revealed with cunning grace.This film demonstrates that amidst all the lowest common denominating crud, American mainstream cinema is occasionally distributing intriguing works of art. This may not be the film to purposely chose on a sad evening of angst and regret, but if you were to catch it at such a moment, the performances might sweep you up, and the film that was a play could beguile you. I gave it an unequivocal 10 for the same reasons your movie guide gives 5's for the films that I would love to have in my tape and disk library.