She's So Lovely

But even the Penns brilliant acting is not quite enough to fulfilm us. Without this balance, the final scenes lack emotional power as we are left as mere spectators, not heartfelt participants, as we could have been. ... Full Review

Take it as you like it: ``She's So Lovely'' is not about telling audiences how they should feel. When we meet Maureen (Robin Wright Penn), she's a pregnant alcoholic with bleached, unwashed hair and the fidgety gestures of a drug addict. ... Full Review

Re-creating that ensemble buzz and that alcoholically fueled soul scraping is an almost impossible task, but in She's So Lovely (Miramax), director Nick Cassavetes, working from an unproduced script by his old man (who died in 1989), gives it a ballsy go. ... Full Review

But ``She's So Lovely'' works as a pure distillation of his original vision. Take it as you like it: ``She's So Lovely'' is not about telling audiences how they should feel. Eddie is an equally vivid character. ... Full Review

Sean Penn deservedly won an acting award at the Cannes Film Festival in May for his fearless performance as a troubled soul in the dark, downbeat melodrama "She's So Lovely. But it has none of the elder Cassavetes' dark-and-dirty charm or any sense of gritty reality. ... Full Review

A stellar cast, toplined by Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn and John Travolta, elevates the profile of a vastly uneven, only intermittently enjoyable film. A seriocomic meditation on the various forms of love and madness, this slight, rather implausible romp lacks the profound ideas and rich subtext of Cassavetes pere's more consequential oeuvre. ... Full Review

Written by the late John Cassavettes in 1987 and filmed by his son Nick a decade later, the comic drama She's So Lovely (originally and more appropriately titled She's De Lovely in honor of the Cole Porter composition central to the movie) stars real-life couple Sean Penn and Robin Wright-Penn as Eddie and Maureen, a young husband and wife whose relationship is strained by Eddie's frequently irrational behavior. ... Full Review

This gifted actress, who appeared in most of her husband's films, has a haunting scene with Penn in She's So Lovely. And Travolta, slipping in late, is dynamite in the best Cassavetes sense -- outrageous but always in character. ... Full Review

D+ Our last film tonight is a video recommendation for a recently released, newly restored film masterpiece. He is convincing in the small part, especially when he tells his brother that the game has gone dreadfully wrong - Penn is certainly better here than the horrible performance he gives in "She's So Lovely. ... Full Review

None of these characters are in any way likeable. Wright-Penn too shows much talent, more than I expected, but Penn steals the show. ... Full Review