She's So Lovely (1997)

There is a lot of good psychology in this 1997 film where a woman who is told that her husband will never recover from mental illness, divorces him while pregnant and soon remarries and builds a new life of her own.Problem is that the ex-husband, well played by Sean Penn, is released and havoc ensues when he reenters her life.We were basically dealing with low class people here from the beginning of the film. Penn,as Eddie, with his emotional hang-ups and ultimate outburst leading to his confinement.Despite the home he has made for her and their children, John Travolta shows the same vulgarity and violence prone inclinations as did Penn.Some may view this as a comedy, but I don't due to the psychological and social ramifications. The ending may be disappointing to many, but it's a vary of the theme of a way we were. Some people are destined to their previous life, no matter how difficult and what it means what they give up in the end. This is a perfect example of this.

Maureen is a bit strung out and pregnant from her low-life husband Eddie. Their lives are an unpredictable mix of actions that mostly involve drinking and scamming round on the fringe of society. When Eddie is "away" for a few days, Marueen falls in drinking with neighbour Kiefer, who tries to rape her but then just beats her. She explains this away to Eddie so as to keep him from going crazy at her or anyone else but when he does start to flip she calls the paramedics to take him into care for his own safety. However when he shoots one of them, Eddie is sentenced to a mental institution. When he comes out he finds that Maureen has divorced him and has moved onto a much more stable and reliable man in the form of Joey, with whom she has had more children.Almost halfway in it becomes evident that this film isn't going to work out that well because, before the "10 years later" jump, the love between the two leads hasn't been established to a convincing degree. Given that the narrative is using this mutual attraction (despite all the negatives) as its lynchpin this is a bit of a problem. Other than establishing that both are unstable and using each other for meaning, the film doesn't do that much for all the time it takes up. The second half isn't that much better as Eddie comes out as a sort of watered down Rainman and disrupts Maureen's new relationship with Joey. The script then asks us to swallow that she still loves Eddie to the point where the mere news that he is released sees her flush the last ten years down the toilet.I can sort of understand what the script was trying to do but it didn't manage to produce anything interest in the aggressive relationships that it paints in the gutter. The characters are where the main failing is. Maureen's character is poorly defined and Wright-Penn doesn't appear to understand what motivates her character and thus turns in a really mixed performance that pushes emotional buttons in each scene but is never consistent. Eddie is OK in the first half of the film as he just seems like a drunk unstable loser but in the second half he is unconvincingly soft. Likewise Penn is strong in the first half but he is unconvincing in the second. Their performances aren't helped by a weird mix of tones – at times a dark love story, at other times a cringingly awful "comedy" complete with "jaunty" music being played over a fight on the front lawn or that horrible scene at Joey's bar. Travolta is a bit better and Stanton is a reasonably nice addition in a small role.Overall this is a shocking mess of a film that spirals downhill from the mid-point onwards. The first half shows potential but doesn't manage to pull off the formative stages of the central relationship and thus fails to set up the second half. However the second half isn't helped by poor development and a terrible mishmash of "comic" moments that simply feel crass and out of place – I suspect even if the first half had been a stormer, this second half would have been poor enough to drag it all under. Even the acting talent seems all at sea and unsure of where they stand or who they are. A load of rubbish with little or no value.

Was very disappointed in this film.Where to start? Well first of all, most of the movie is really just set-up for the last 1/4 of the movie yet nothing really much happens in all this time so I found myself just wondering when John Travolta would enter the picture.I guess the major problem with the movie is that Robin Wright Penn's character doesn't progress at all. Though there's supposed to be this time span of ten years between the first 3/4 of the movie and the last.So in the last 1/4 of the movie we find Robin Wright Penn's character in this home in the suburbs, married with kids and all, yet it's played as if she just stepped out of the gutter of the proceeding portion of the movie. Really makes no sense at all.It's a fairy tale and totally unbelievable.***SPOILERS AHEAD**** And to accept the fact that she would just run off with Sean Penn's character (who's been in the nut house for 10 years) even though she hasn't kept in touch with him in all those years and has a new husband (Travolta) and kids and a whole life, yet she just leaves it all behind is just so silly.A similar scenario was played out much better in the end of the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks & Helen Hunt. In that movie he returns from the dead after having been stranded on an island for years. When he returns, he finds Hunt married with kids. Though they profess their love for each other, she of course, says she simply can't run off with him and leave her kids and her present husband. THAT folks is reality.What we have presented in this movie is just so much silliness. Shame too, because the acting's not bad.But basically what you have is a movie where the first 3/4 of it is one long boring set-up followed by a quick totally unbelievable last 1/4.

This movie has so many holes in the story I can't believe John Cassavetes wrote it and Nick Cassavetes directed this utter garbage. I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, even John travolta's character was supposed to be the rock solid 'marriage & family' kind of guy, but with his disgusting foul language around the 3 daughters and the appalling disregard for any sense of discipline and wholesomeness for them was shocking. I know, this is real! This is the way it is out in the world! If this be so I truly see the dumbing down of America. These people didn't even have the common sense to come in out of the rain. Hustlers, thieves, not an ounce of compassion. Where do they get the money to produce these things?? I can understand the actors want to make a buck doing whatever. But I can't believe this movie made a return on anybody's investment.