Is a strange movie to listen to while waking up.

The plot wasn’t quite what I was expecting - mostly centering around a moderately-sized house with a fairly good view and the people that fight over it: a very sad woman who is quick to jump to self-destructive behavior, a creepy deputy (with the world’s second most annoying voice) who seems to have lost his tenuous grasp on what’s right and wrong, a former Iranian Colonel who’s desperate to regain the respect of his wife, adolescent son, and social ladder-climbing daughter.

To me the extensive panoramic shots of the sea, fog, and Jennifer Connolly’s bare thighs weren’t quite as stunning as the cinematographer wanted me to think. After a while slightly gratuitous shots start to seem downright insulting. Especially when it’s cold enough outside to turn on the heater and the girl’s wearing friggin daisy duke cutoffs. I guess it’s supposed to characterize her decline but her hair just wasn’t nearly oily enough to evoke the true attire of the downwardly mobile.

And while that deputy was ok-looking I think he’s had some fairly serious botox treatments. Next to no expression through the whole movie. But maybe he was supposed to evoke Michael Myers. And that voice. Jesus Christ what an annoying voice.

I used to think my personal hell would be a Tiki bar on an island where all people did was talk about hurricanes and listen to Jimmy Buffet songs over and over but now I think it might be sitting in a movie theater watching a movie animated in the style of The Triplets of Belleville voiced only by that deputy guy and Joey Lauren Adams with a score sung by Natalie Merchant. Gah! The voices!! Stop the voices! For god’s sake someone clear their throat!!

It wasn’t as interesting a movie as I thought it would be. Although characters who seemed to have no redeeming value in the beginning did gain some as time went on which was..different..because no one was presented in any kind of sympathetic or judgmental light really.

In the end it all goes very badly though. Just because that girl didn’t open her official-looking mail.

So. Moral of the story? Open your mail!