Marvins Töchter

Marvin's room turned out to be a brilliant movie assisted well by a great performance by some veteran actors like Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro ( although he wasn't the center of attraction as he was the doctor ).

Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton are two sisters who have estranged each other for 20 years and Diane calls upon her sister to take care of their father as she herself realized that she was suffering from Leukemia. Leonardo portrays the character of Hank who does not get along with his mother Meryl on account of her abusive behaviour. Diane Keaton wants Meryl to take care of her Aunt Roth and their father when she would be gone. Meryl portrays a mean woman who is afraid of responsibilities and is troubled by the deliberate acts of her son Hank (Leo). The movie is a beautiful depiction of how Meryl Streep decides to eventually aid her dying sister by stepping into her shoes and taking enough pluck to set things right between herself and Hank.

Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep acted exceptionally well not to forget Leo. Altogether their performance was brilliant. I was touched by the movie. I'd rate it a 7 on 10. It was certainly one of the finest flicks that I've watched.

This stage to screen adaptation about two estranged sisters attempting a reconciliation after one is diagnosed with cancer is sentimental to the extreme, manipulative beyond forgiveness.....and had me close to blubbering like a baby by the time it was over.

Chalk it up to the fact that I had recently lost a grandmother to cancer, but this film nearly devastated me even as I was mad that it was so maudlin. The fact that it works as well as it does is due largely to the fact that such good actors are cast in it. Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton play the sisters (Keaton is the ill one), and while it would never have occurred to me to put these two actresses together, the decision was inspired. And right before he rocketed to international fame, Leonardo DiCaprio does strong work as Keaton's troubled nephew.

I won't even try to defend this film against those who say it's too schmaltzy to bear, but please let the rest of us enjoy it in blubbery peace.

Grade: A-

This film was on the end of Eraser that I taped off Sky Premier, it was purely accidental that I watched it. I started to watch it thinking that it might get me to sleep, but then I found it great. Robert De Niro had all the best lines with his pathetic brother, Bob(Dan Hedaya). Meryl Streep also shone in her screen time with her son, Hank(Leonardo Di Caprio in his best role ever).

I loved the whole dramatic sequences, and found the acting touching and Oscar worthy. Diane Keaton provided all the tears in the film, with the others all providing laughs.

This film was a huge surprise. I don't usually like dramas(although I loved Di Caprio's and De Niro's other film together, This Boy's Life), and I recommend this to everyone who loves good dramas. Rating=4/5

This movie should be reviewed for its great performances from some of the best actors today. Meryl Streep does not fail to shine out as one of the best actresses of all time as an emotionally distraught mother in this tale of hopes, emotions and intense feelings. Keaton, on the other hand portrays her best performance ever, and Leonardo DiCaprio proves that he has talents besides being a heartthrob. This movie really moved me, not because of the story itself but the acting was very realistic....I believe that they all should have received an Oscar nomination. Well done!

Small cast, intimate dramas like MARVIN'S ROOM, NIGHT MOTHER or STEEL MAGNOLIAS are among the hardest to adapt from the confines of the stage where the imagination can open the plays ideas up and make what might seem maudlin, real and life affirming to the more realistic form of film where it is harder to see beyond the mundane "bed pan" realities of life. In order to reinvent the best of these - like the plays mentioned above - to the new genre, every break is needed starting with bravura casts who, one hopes, an audience will want to see even "reading the phone book." When a play turns around the characters dealing literally with confrontations with death at the core of the plot as in these three great plays, what HAD been on stage a single set intense evening is frequently "opened up" with all sorts of other locations and events almost as if to distract us from the very issues which we are supposed to be attending to.

On stage and screen MARVIN'S ROOM may well be the best of these three "death plays," all of which started and thrived Off-Broadway (only NIGHT MOTHER made the leap to a Broadway house in its initial production). While, somewhat amazingly (considering that one of the standards of the award is "depiction of American life"), MARVIN'S ROOM was not even a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1992, it did win a number of other accolades which virtually demanded that Hollywood attempt to bring it to the rest of the nation - and they certainly gave it their all starting with the genuinely all star cast which is both the movie's blessing and its curse. It enraptures with the bouquet of bravura performances even while moving focus away from the central "earth-mother" of the family forced to face her own mortality while trying to care for and hold her collapsing family together around her (Diane Keaton's Oscar nomination - the film's only - notwithstanding).

Ultimately, the film gets where the play was going (as well it ought to have, since Scott McPherson had the luxury of adapting his own play - he may have written his screenplay simultaneously with, if not before the tighter stage version, since he died in 1992, the year MARVIN'S ROOM received its Off-Broadway production at Playwrights' Horizons, winning the Outer Critics' Circle and Drama Desk Awards as best Play of the Year), but the power seems to have shifted from the play's revelations themselves to the dazzling performances. It's still well worth taking the trip, but more to appreciate a monument to more than a dozen brilliant stage and screen careers than a revelatory experience on the meaning of humanity in the face of life and death that the play had been.

Do, by all means see the movie. It works. ...but if you ever get a chance to see the play which either suggested it or grew from it, by all means do - it's smaller but even better.