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December 02, 2007

THE SAVAGES — REMAKE

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ColeSmithey.comAging and dying are the themes that writer/director Tamara Jenkins ("The Slums of Beverly Hills") takes a comical running start at before hitting diminishing returns.

Wendy (Laura Linney) and Jon Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are the estranged children of Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco), their disenfranchised father whose days with his domestic partner Doris in Sun City, Arizona come to an abrupt end when he smears feces on the bathroom wall to insult their caregiver.

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Lenny’s spiral into dementia pulls would-be playwright Wendy from her Manhattan temp job to Buffalo, New York where Jon teaches College Theater and is on deadline for a book on Brecht.

Together the siblings find a suitable facility in which to place Lenny during his last days while each of them face glaring emotional voids that have left them single in their early ‘40s.

ColeSmithey.com

It’s obvious that Jenkins is inspired by the work of Canadian writer/director Denys Arcand ("The Barbarian Invasions"), but she doesn’t dig deep enough to capture the complexities and nuance that the material demands. Hoffman and Linney keep the film afloat toward a lackluster ending that all but shovels everything that has come before under a metaphorical rug.

Rated R. 113 mins.

2 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

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