Director: Jonathan Darby
Starring: Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hal Holbrook, Nina Foch, Debi Mazar
Running Time: 96 minutes
Synopsis: New Yorker Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in a serious relationship with Jackson (Jonathan Schaech). They head out to meet his widowed mother Martha (Jessica Lange), who lives at Kilronan, the family's horse breeding countryside estate. Martha is full of fake charm and displays a possessive Jocasta complex towards Jackson. Helen becomes pregnant, marries Jackson, and they move into Kilronan to help revitalize the estate. Martha's passive aggressive hostility towards Helen kicks into overdrive.
What Works Well: The overheated family dynamics are never boring, and the running time is mercifully short. Veterans Nina Foch (as Jackson's grandmother Alice, banished by Martha from interacting with the family) and Hal Holbrook (as the town doctor) add a gloss of undeserved quality.
What Does Not Work As Well: This potboiler suffers from overacting (Lange, cigarette and drink over-emphasizing every line), non-acting (Paltrow, monotonously sleep-walking through the role), and under-acting (Schaech, his Jackson seemingly oblivious as his mother devours his wife). Martha's conniving is theatrical rather than astute, the characters behave according to the whims of the script rather than with any conviction, and their evolutions are jarring.
Key Quote:
Alice (about Martha): She was a stable girl, shoveling horse shit!
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