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Sisters, The

EMAILPRINTArclight Films

Sisters, The reviews
40
5.3 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 14 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 3 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Drama

Written by: Richard Alfieri (also play)
Anton Chekhov (inspiration, play The Three Sisters)

Directed by: Arthur Allan Seidelman

Release Date:
Theatrical: April 14, 2006
DVD: June 13, 2006

Running Time: 113 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: R for language and some sexual content

Starring Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, Erika Christensen, Eric McCormack, Chris O'Donnell, Tony Goldwyn, Steven Culp, Alessandro Nivola, Elizabeth Banks, and Rip Torn

Using a college on New York's Upper East Side as their surrogate home and sanctuary, four siblings struggle to banish the ghost of their dead father and create some semblance of harmony as adults. Suggested by Chekhov's "The Three Sisters," this unflinchingly honest drama explores and explodes the myths surrounding family and friendship. (Arclight Films)

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

75

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Intelligent, observant entertainment designed for an adult audience.

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63

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Bello is phenomenally good as the embittered Marcia, while Stuart and Christensen do their best with their less complex roles, but they're all undermined by Alfieri's shrill, mannered dialogue and cliched backstories that wouldn't be out of place in a dysfunction-family-of-the-week movie.

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50

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Family gatherings in the movies are shorthand for brutal trips down mine-strewn memory lanes. The Sisters doesn't disappoint in that regard.

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50

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The Sisters is still somewhat compelling thanks to Bello, whose unguarded, provocative work continually resuscitates this corpse of a melodrama whenever it lays fallow.

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50

LA Weekly Chuck Wilson

The Sisters may be worth a look, however, for the work of the magnificent Bello and Tony Goldwyn, who's never been better than as the married man with whom Marcia has an affair. Their final clench is pure, guilty-pleasure melodrama, which means it's not the least bit Chekhovian.

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50

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Projects like this bring out the best in actors, who take salary cuts to work in Chekhov (even at one remove). What we can guess, watching the film, is that the same players would make a good job of "Three Sisters" but are undermined by the faculty club, which works like a hotel lobby. There's no way to sustain dramatic momentum here.

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40

Variety Ronnie Scheib

Even a magnificently inspired Maria Bello proves insufficiently daring to save Richard Alfieri and Arthur Allan Seidelman's Chekhov-based chamber piece Sisters from pretentious psychodrama.

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40

The New York Times Neil Genzlinger

Insufferable characters make for an insufferable play or movie. The Sisters, a grueling family feud conceived by Richard Alfieri, proves the point.

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40

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

A pompous, overwrought and itchingly claustrophobic psychodrama.

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38

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Pretentious, stagy and over-the-top update of Chekov's "The Three Sisters."

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30

Village Voice Mark Holcomb

A clumsy graft of Chekhovian high dudgeon and harsh, Albee-esque psychological realism that probably worked better onstage.

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30

The Hollywood Reporter John DeFore

Lifeless and irredeemably sour. It is difficult to imagine much of an audience embracing it, despite a cast of well-knowns and up-and-comers.

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25

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The Sisters isn't just bad Chekhov; it's bad Chekhov modernized and then plunked in front of a camera.

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20

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The result is an insufferable academic cocktail party of declamatory speeches coaxed to life in its middle stretch by the incredible Maria Bello, who wades in like a paramedic at a disaster scene.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 5.3 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Deborah T. gave it a10:
Chekhov made comprehensible but more than that, a great piece of work by itself. Plus, great performances, esp. from Maria Bello and Tony Goldwyn but generally from everyone.

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