Tudo em Família

I watched this movie with a grain of salt, due to all the negative reviews here on IMDb. I was expecting nothing and just killin' some time.

I had to come back to the reviews here to double check that the negative reviews were actually for this movie.

This was an excellent movie. The story is superb, like a really good short story I didn't notice the time and it was over before I realized it.

I don't know if people were expecting something like True Blood or maybe reacting to some of the character's behaviors they didn't like or what. But let me tell you what, this is one well made, well acted and well directed movie. The filming and "artful" effects are done in just enough of a way that really tied it together as well.

I was genuinely surprised that I had not heard of this movie before. I just came across it on Netflix at random.

My conclusion is: it is a very interesting story that I found to be far more real and interesting than the last 30 big Hollywood movies I have seen... Maybe more.

You will not really get the whole story of this film by its title, nor by the poster. It was good that I saw this film without any idea what this was all about, not even what genre it was. I thought it was a romantic comedy. It was not exactly one. Once the film started, I thought I would not like it. But as it went along, I was pulled in, all the way to its end. This is one good little film that deserves more attention.

Put simply, the story of "Straight As" is about how the lives of the Henderson family was affected when long-estranged Scott (Ryan Philippe) makes a surprise return, supposedly because their late mother had convinced him to. His sister-in-law Katherine (Anna Paquin) is flustered by Scott's unwelcome visit right when his brother William (Luke Wilson) was out of town on business. But it was with his nephew Charles and niece Gracie that Scott made his biggest connections. However, with his foul language, cigarettes and drugs, will Scott ever be welcomed back by the family he left more than ten years ago?

The actors of this film worked very well. I loved that the acting in this film is very understated and restrained There were no big hyper- dramatic scenes as family melodrama are mostly prone to having.

I have not seen Ryan Philippe act in a lead role for a long time. His career had never really recovered since he and Reese Witherspoon broke up. He was outside his usual zone playing the black sheep of the family. I believed he played the multiple levels of his complex character very well.

I had not seen Anna Paquin act in a straight dramatic role ever since she won the Oscar as a precocious child in "The Piano"! It was a welcome break from notable recent roles with supernatural powers. I liked her subtle attack on a role which could have been a showcase of histrionics in a lesser actress.

Luke Wilson's role was rather right up his old alley, but it was good to see him in a dramatic role. The actors who played the two kids, Riley Thomas Stewart and Ursula Parker, were both very cute, natural and moving. Powers Boothe, who played the Henderson patriarch, also had his shining moments.

I liked how the whole story unfolded. Yes, the story elements were all soap opera staples, but they way they were woven together by director James Cox was interesting and involving. The musical score and the songs were all very emotionally apt to the scenes they accompanied. The cinematographer liked to play with lights and glare, which were good. As a whole, the unheralded film was a pleasant surprise which more people should know about. 7/10.

Although it is classified as a "comedy" there is absolutely nothing funny in this movie. That being said, I enjoyed every minute of it. Ryan Phillipe is really good in this movie and so is the kid. The rest of the characters are somewhat irrelevant in my opinion. Without giving too much away, the ending where they're just sitting the two are sitting enjoying eachtohers company reminds me of my wife and I and really was a great moment. I recommend this movie to everyone. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I watched this film on netflix and to be honest I am kind of used to watching crappy movies on there but today was definitely a pleasant surprise.

This will be brief. The cast,with many quality proved works behind them can't be blamed for what is obviously a poorly directed, badly written and horrendously edited hack-job. The stunted and forced direction, film- school camera angles and poorly written dialogue are just too much to overcome for even this group of fine actors.

This had to be agony for the actors to sit through if there actually was a premiere, and the wasted storyline that could have been compelling or at the very least engaging was finished off by a lazy cable-network soundtrack and bad staging.

This could have been a very nice story. If this director ever gets another chance to do something like this he need to watch the last Hallmark Hall-of-Fame productions... they do this infinitely better.

I rather enjoyed this film. It's too bad it seems to have been given a half hearted production. The film has so much going for it, but seems to have stopped short of what it would have taken to really make a go of it, namely, cohesion and a really good edit. There were some problems with continuity too. Was Scott gone 9 or 10 years because both were mentioned and it turns out to matter. Mr. Phillippe's Scott seemed to also have had a tattoo that came and went. It's those little things that show a lack of attention that reflect a failure of…what? Talent? Devotion? Funding? I don't know. But the end product is unpolished. In fact it plays better as a series of scenes than as one film. It tells the story of one family, William(Luke Wilson), his wife Katherine(Anna Paquin), and their two young children. The marriage is struggling. They have all the trappings of wealth and status but William is constantly away on business and Katherine is becoming robotic and cold, just going through the motions. The children are responding with eccentric behavior. Charles, for instance, wears a suit and carries a brief case to elementary school. There is also William's father(Powers Boothe) living nearby who has succumbed to Alzheimer's. But most importantly for this film, there is William's brother, Scott(Ryan Phillippe), who has been missing for some years but shows up one afternoon riding a horse onto the property. This film is classified as a comedy and it is funny, but in the old fashioned comedic method of amusing circumstances rather than manic behavior or convoluted plots. The comedic circumstances all center around the character of the prodigal brother, Scott. He is definitely the cuckoo in the nest of this buttoned down family. He drinks too much, smokes pot and has very little censor. He is utterly charming man, but immature and often inappropriate, especially in his vocabulary. He soon wins over the children and has Katherine struggling with feelings she once had for him. Scott has returned home at the request, he insists, of his dead mother who tells him he is needed. And except for total lack of conformity and his habit of lighting up a joint and/or a cigarette constantly as well as trying to drink the drink cabinet dry, he's not a bad house guest. However that's not how Katherine sees it, he's rather more spontaneous than she can tolerate. Yet we see that people are like moths to his flame, and Katherine is no more immune than her children. I found the acting really well done, not surprising given the cast, but the supporting cast doesn't lag behind either. (How they managed to cast a little girl who looks so much like she could be Anna Paquin's daughter I don't know.) The musical score added much to the atmosphere. I'm a big fan of well done musical scores. I've mentioned this is funny; I laughed out loud several times while watching it. I enjoyed this film. It's been a long time since I saw Ryan Phillippe act with child actors and I want to point out that he does it singularly well. Overall his portrayal of Scott drives the whole film. But I'd have liked this effort to be more than a direct to video pass off. It seems a betrayal of all the work and talent that went into it. And last but not least the ending is a really hackneyed cliché. Hate that.