The Secret Lives of Dentists

I just saw this movie last night, and I thought it was absolutely compelling. A perfect example of that rare Hollywood movie that actually uses "show and tell", instead of car chases and hit you over the head non-reality. I ached with each facial expression of anger, fear and doubt. I can see how a lot of people would not like this movie. I think because it is slow, subtle, and full of nuances, it may be more to a woman's liking. Maybe the fact that I've been married for 25 years, I can relate to the realistic portrayals. The actors were stellar, especially Campbell Scott and the three little girls that played his children. I became very attached to this family, and wanted them to stay together no matter what, which I think was the point of the movie. Marriage is not just sweetness and light or happy endings, but the making of memories good and bad,the struggles and triumphs, and the commitment it takes to making family dynamics work for the benefit of all. Quite frankly, I just can't stop thinking about this movie, which for me, is the greatest compliment of all.

This is the closest I have come to getting sick in a theatre since Monty Python's Meaning of Life. The graphic vomiting in this movie is so repulsive and ultimately meaningless that it just overtakes the entire movie. Plus Dennis Leary gets real annoying real fast. Skip this one, but if you see it, skip the popcorn.

To be honest, I've never been much of a fan of Campbell Scott or Dennis Leary. For that matter, I've usually found director Alan Rudolph's films snail paced and DULL. You can make a slow movie that works (i.e. Michael Mann's The Insider), but it's difficult. As usual, Campbell seems to be in a semi-coma. How the hell is he the product of two such dynamic actors as the last George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst? Both of them were such vibrant magnetic people. Was he cowed by them?

So, we end up with the nasty, ugly Dennis Leary stealing the show. Hope Davis, who is so luminous as the schleppy Mrs Harvey Pekar is also reduced to a dullard, who might be having an affair with the conductor of the opera she appears in at the beginning of the movie. Did I have to mention that? Did this movie have to be made? All I know, if someone I was living with said that they could kill me out loud, let alone in front of our kids, I'd be out of there, helter skelter, no questions asked!

First of all, the casting was excellent. This was a difficult script to cast. The story and the characters are what they are. There are two dentists (husband & wife): dentistry like accounting has its stereotypes, but these characters as acted are "type."

The film is about marriage, and the preservation of family in the face of imperfection, disappointment, disillusionment, and reality. Family is good, but difficult. Marriage can be good, but is always challenging.

This story is as long and ponderous as the trials of life. The narration is great, with originality - especially for the brand of story. The subject matter is depicted with monstrous understanding. Only someone who hasn't struggled with glints of success through most of the parts of family and marriage, might not find understanding.

Comedy is rarely so genuine, and the humanity of this work is pervasive. 'Lives of Dentists' is not going to change society, but it may help a few marriages to re-evaluate, and a few families to re-connect.

"The Secret Lives of Dentists" is a wonderful evocation of fatherhood and the power of paternal feelings, even while it's showing a marriage in crisis.

Campbell Scott is the antithesis of his ego-centric child-man in "Roger Dodger" to present a loving, if repressed, father and husband who is shook to the very core of his being by suspicions of his wife's infidelity.

Playwright Craig Lucas adapts Jane Smiley's novella (I read "Age of Grief" but only remember it as a brittle slice of realism about marriage and family) by using a similar technique as in "A Beautiful Mind" in having conversations with hyper Denis Leary to let us inside the panic in the husband's mind. Especially well shown, with beautiful editing, cinematography, and music, are his stream-of-consciousness memories of his meeting, courting, and living with his wife.

Hope Davis doesn't get to do much more than Meryl Streep did in "Kramer vs. Kramer," but she adds significantly to her actual lines with luminous acting, especially when we see how happy she is when she's away from her ball-and-chain, though we get very little other explanation for her behavior or choices.

This movie has absolutely the most vivid depiction of what it's like to be stuck at home with sick kids; the very young child actors are the most natural and delightful I've ever seen in the movies. The spreading fever becomes a wonderful metaphor for the state of the marriage and a way to release Dad's fantasy life even more, as well as a realistic family crisis.

Friends of my parents served as dental consultants; their names are spelled wrong, but those aren't the only misspellings in the credits.