IMAGINARY HEROES
(two stars)
Generic suburban angst.
Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R (sexual content, violence, language). At the Angelika, Mercer and Houston streets, for one week. Reopens in February.
IF you think you’ve seen “Imaginary Heroes” before, you’re right – only it was called “The Ice Storm,” or maybe “Ordinary People.”
Writer-director Dan Harris’ new take on suburban angst is essentially a rehash of those earlier movies and others I can’t immediately recall.
In fact, Sigourney Weaver – one of the best things about “Imaginary Heroes” – had almost the same role in “The Ice Storm”: matriarch of a dysfunctional suburban family.
This time, her husband, Ben, is played by Jeff Daniels and one of her sons, Tim, by Emile Hirsch (the other good thing about the movie).
The drama begins with the suicide (a bullet in the head) of the family’s older son, (Kip Pardue), a high school swimming champ who, we’re told, hated swimming and the attention it drew to him.
“Imaginary Heroes” follows the family’s survivors as each, in his or her own way, deals with the death.
Sandy (Weaver) returns to her hippie stoner days and finds herself in jail when she naively walks into a head shop and asks to buy some weed.
Ben turns to booze and pills and takes a leave from his white-collar job – without telling Sandy – to spend his days sitting on a park bench, staring into space.
Tim, too, turns to drugs, which leads to a homosexual encounter with his best bud while high on ecstasy.
Oh yes, there’s a sister (Michelle Williams), too, but she’s so seldomly at home that her reaction doesn’t much matter. (Talk about an underwritten role.)
“Imaginary Heroes” follows the formula long ago established for movies of this ilk: the Big Crisis, followed by the Big Revelation, followed by the Big Showdown, followed by the Happy Ending.
Sony Pictures Classic is opening the flick for a week to qualify it for the Oscars. It’s so bland and innocuous that it just might win some.