Review of Imaginary Heroes (2004) by V H — 11 Mar 2005

Movie pickings have become so slim lately that I went to see "Imaginary Heroes" despite the fact that almost 70% of its reviews were negative. It came down to either that or "Pooh's Heffalump Movie", but once I learned that the Heffalumps appear in the film without their regular companions, the Woozles, the concept seemed so preposterous that I felt, as Eeyore would say, "What's the use?".

Okay sure, I could've seen "Being Julia" (too period piecey), or "The Aviator" (too long and Leonardesque), or "Hitch" (too Fresh Princey), all of which received much better reviews than the movie that I eventually selected, but sometimes you just have to take a chance and hope that almost everyone else in the world is wrong. So I lowered my expectations and anted up my $9.50. And I'm happy to report, I wasn't disappointed. Not only did this movie not completely suck, but I ended up actually kind of liking it. Could it be that low expectations are the key to happiness? Why didn't somebody tell me this sooner?

This film is about the Travises, a typical dysfunctional suburban family. There's mother Sandy (Sigourney Weaver), father Ben (Jeff Daniels), daughter Penny, who's away at college, popular older brother Matt who's a swimming champion, and his shadow-dwelling 17-year-old brother, Tim. The story begins as Tim calls Matt for breakfast one morning and discovers that he's blown his head off. The rest of the film follows the surviving family members through the next year of their lives.

Sandy reacts by rediscovering the joys of pot smoking, something she was apparently quite familiar with in her youth. Penny copes by making her visits home scarce, though there's no indication that this is much of a change for her anyway. Tim goes to a lot of parties, smokes a lot of dope, pops a lot of pills, breaks up with his girlfriend, and has an ecstasy-fueled make-out session with the boy next door.

Ben goes the most wacko, though since we never see him before the suicide, it's hard to know how normal he was to start with. For example, he insists that Sandy keep dishing out a plate of food for Matt at the dinner table every night. This reminds me of this cheap restaurant I used to frequent in Philadelphia called the Divine Tracy, which is run by this weird cult called the Peace Mission. They always had places set for the founders, Father and Mother Divine, even though they'd been dead for like 30 years. But even they weren't creepy enough to put actual food on the plates.

Another example of Ben's craziness is when Sandy discovers, long after the fact, that Ben was placed on mandatory leave of absence from his job. He still gets up and gets dressed and pretends to go to work every morning, but really he just sits on a park bench all day. I know just what you're thinking: this is exactly like that time when Peter Brady got fired from his job at Mr. Martinelli's bike shop and didn't tell his parents, but instead went to the park to feed the pigeons every day. Yup, you're right. It always comes back to the "Brady Bunch".

Besides going nutso, Ben also turns into a real bastard, especially to poor Tim. Matt was clearly Ben's pride and joy and he never wastes an opportunity to tell Tim how worthless he thinks he is. He even goes so far as to demand that Tim repay the thousands of dollars he's spent on piano lessons for him, since they didn't manage to turn him into an outstanding musician. Luckily for Tim, he has a really close relationship with his mother, who's very cool as parents go, and tries her best to offset the damage inflicted by Ben. Unfortunately, in the game of parental rock-paper-scissors, I think belittlement beats praise every time. I'm not sure what scissors is. Maybe there is no scissors.

I really liked the character of Tim, who's the focal point of the movie, and manages to be angsty without being whiney. And Sigourney Weaver is great as Sandy, one of the best movie mothers ever. This certainly isn't a flawless film, but it did manage to hold my interest for a couple of hours, which is all that I was really hoping for.