Pretentious & Really Boring!
The Hours is an example of another one of Harvey Weinstein’s attempts to trick the academy into believing what they’re voting for is any good. It’s not! It tells the intertwining stories of three miserable housewives who are secretly lesbians, carrying hidden secrets about senseless tragedy.
“I can’t think of anything more exhilarating than a trip to London.” Says Nicole Kidman, playing Virginia Woolf and smoking a cigarette. This is the only funny line in the film. The ONLY one. Everything else is downright depressing.
Woolf is having problems writing her first sentence. “Mrs. Dolloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” Heavy. Really heavy. Give me a break!
“I finally read Richard’s novel”, says a judgmental florist to Meryl Streep.
“It took him 10 years to write it”, she proclaims defensively.
“Maybe it takes another 10 to read.” These are the types of exchanges from the characters we don’t want to know on screen. They’re not real. They’re not interesting. They’re carbon cutouts of one long movie trailer that’s desperate for Oscar’s. The Hours certainly succeeded in that field, nabbing 9 nominations including Best Picture (!) and Best Actress for Kidman, who prevailed despite being on screen for less than 30 minutes. However she is the closest in portraying a character one can have compassion for. In one touching scene, she prepares a funeral for a little bird and tells her niece that when we die, “we go back to where we came from.”
The most nauseating character is easily Julianne Moore, who’ve I’ve grown to despise more and more now that I’ve screened more of her work back to back. She’s an ugly cryer. She’s a slut when it comes to taking all her clothes off just for the sake of showing it off. She’s not likable, this time playing a mother who abandons her family so she can (get this) become a librarian in Canada. No joke. She has a son who’s such a bad actor, even the filmmakers admitted they only hired him because he bared resemblance to Ed Harris.
Ed Harris is the worst thing about the movie. Playing an aging crypt keeper dying of AIDS and living in one of those infamous 2001 New York City apartment lofts nobody can afford, we can’t help but roll our eyes every time he opens his fuzzy little mouth - and scream at Streep for preparing a party in his honor. “What if I told you I wanted to die?”
The cast is one long list of “isn’t that so and so?” It includes John C Reilly as Moore’s thankless husband, Toni Collette as a fat lesbian who “has a growth in her uterus”, Miranda Richardson as Kidman’s self-absorbed sister (“have you seen your doctors?”), Claire Danes as Streep’s bland daughter who contributes absolutely nothing to the story other then her really cute Gap sweater. Allison Janney as Streep’s lesbian lover, who does have a decent line about exes all sitting at one table “so they can exist in agony”, or something like that. Steven Dallion as Kidman’s weakling of a husband who informs her “I’ve read a manuscript this morning that consists of three spelling mistakes and I’m not even on page 4.”
Oh and Jeff Daniels as a REALLY gay aging queen who visits Streep for no other reason then to feel sorry for himself and make passive aggressive comments about living in San Francisco.
The story is non existent. Again Julianne Moore’s biggest story arch is “baking a cake for Daddy so he knows we love him.”
“Otherwise he won’t know we love him?” Asks the stupid son.
“That’s right baby”, responds Moore- who’s real motivation is to ditch her family so she can commit suicide and read Mrs. Dolloway.
The only saving aspects of the film are Philip Glass’s haunting score, Ann Roth’s inspired subtle costumes and the film editing by Peter Boyle.
The rest of the story is tediously long, dull and goes absolutely nowhere. We don’t care about the characters because again- they exist solely as political statements and not real human beings. Only Nicole Kidman is someone I would want to sit next to on a park bench- and ironically, she actually does sit on many of them in the movie- though you wouldn’t get much of a conversation, since she’s talking to herself.
Final Grade: D