She’s So Lovely.
Starring: Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, John Travolta & Harry Dean Stanton
Directed By: Nick Cassavetes
She’s So Lovely is Nick Cassavetes (son of the late and very famous, independent director John Cassavetes) 2nd attempt at the directing duties and this time he is adapting one of his late father’s unpublished screenplays. Nick has also had a stab at acting in a very shoddy film called twogether not only was the film shoddy but so was Nick who came across as an arrogant poser who can’t act to save himself. But with She’s So Lovely he shows us that he does have some potential to be a great director as this film is one half a great film and the other half a very sloppy, disorganised piece of junk.
She’s So Lovely stars Sean Penn as Eddie a mentally disturbed always drunk loser who is madly in love with his wife Maureen (Robin Wright Penn) who is also slightly disturbed and madly in love with her husband. The film follows this couple’s relationship and half way through the film Eddie ends up doing something which puts him in a mental hospital and he does not see his wife unitl another 10 years. There are now problems for Eddie as when he returns from being in hospital his wife has remarried to a man named Joey (John Travolta) and the two have a couple of kids and Eddie’s young daughter is now a young girl who has never meet her real father.
For the first hour or so I was deeply impressed by this film as the two main actors Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn deliver brilliant performances and there antics on the screen range from amusing to very endearing.Cassavetes does a wonderful job in the first half making us believe these two are wildly in love and are dangerously unstable,he also introduces as to a range of colourful characters such as Eddie’s good friend Shorty (Harry Dean Stanton).
But despite it’s four star first half this movie quickly dwindles into a 3 star affair as the 2nd half is highly unbelievable it features Joey the John Travolta character who by no fault of Travolta is a very poor character he is very 2 dimensonial. The actions of all three main characters seem a little stupid to me and the film’s ending seems a little to pat and easily resolved.
But overall this film has an exceptional first half and perhaps others will not find the second half as bad as I did.It must be mentioned that despite it’s short comings the two leads deliver performances which are Oscar worthy.
3 STARS 