ALLAN HUNTER at the Movies.

HOLLYWOOD cannot resist a concerted tug at the heartstrings. Any film that tackles the joys and sorrows of life seems doomed to become little more than a supersized soap opera.
  
‘Imaginary Heroes’ is no exception. The first feature from young screenwriter Dan Harris is very slick and self-assured. It boasts a multi-faceted central performance from Sigourney Weaver, but it is also fatally sentimental.
  
Like the superior 1980 Oscar-winner ‘Ordinary People’, the film charts a middle-class family in crisis. When champion swimmer Matt Travis (Kip Pardue) commits suicide, his remaining family retreat into their own private grief. The film follows a year in which they try to come to terms with what has happened and decide whether they can still function as a family.

Those most directly effected are Matt’s younger brother Tim (Emile Hirsch) and their mother Sandy (Weaver), a woman worn down by weariness and grief. Drifting away from her husband Ben (Jeff Daniels), she takes comfort in the support of her son and the kind of reckless behaviour that eventually lands her in jail.
  
Only by falling apart can all of them eventually hope to reunite. ‘Imaginary Heroes’ squeezes so many defining events into one year that it begins to lose conviction. Some characters are given much more weight than others so that the emphasis is clearly placed on the bond between Tim and Sandy.
  
Weaver is the film’s saving grace. She seems to understand all the pain and disappointment in a character who faces the world with a mixture of bitter resignation and wounding wit. Her commanding performance is the reason to see this otherwise trite family drama.
  
IMAGINARY HEROES
General release, selected cinemas
Director: Dan Harris
Stars: Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels, Emile Hirsch, Michelle Williams, Kip Pardue
Screenwriter: Dan Harris
Certificate: 18
Running time: 117 mins
Country: USA
Year: 2004
 

© Allan Hunter, 2005