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75The film belongs to Phoenix ("To Die For"), who is terrific. He has the gift, shared with his late brother, River, of conveying emotions without pushing them at you. The delicacy of his scenes with Tyler lets you enjoy the film for what it truly is: a heartbreaker.
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75The veteran Baker anchors the proceedings, and you would like to see more of her character.
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75Inventing the Abbotts has the cast and characters to be something special; the script just isn't ambitious enough.
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70An emotionally powerful but extremely old-fashioned coming-of-age saga.
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70Apart from the script, it's the actors who make this a film worth seeing; all of them look and sometimes even act like real people rather than types or icons, and behind their interactions can be felt the depths of lived experience.
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60What lifts this at key moments is the outstanding Phoenix's simpatico performance and we can add to the credit side happy casting that for once has assembled actresses and actors who really do resemble each other and present plausible siblings.
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60Best watched as a showcase for radiant young talent.
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60All the actors caught me up so warmly that I stopped feeling guilty about liking this corny picture. [28 April 1997, p.30]
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58The only real heat among the group comes from Jennifer Connelly, who, as the bad-girl middle daughter, raises the stakes any time she's on screen.
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50The picture is haunted by a story problem: It isn't about anything but itself. There's no sense of life going on in the corners of the frame.
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50The drama is long on 1950s atmosphere and complicated feelings, short on emotional depth and real psychological insight.
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50An awkward script, a mannered style and the selection of hill-and-dale Petaluma as a stand-in for an Illinois small town all undermine the film.
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50This thing can take pride of place in a long tradition of Hollywood howlers.
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50The members of its young cast (Jennifer Connelly, Joaquin Phoenix, Liv Tyler) have all shown promise elsewhere, but don't really get to do much but look attractive and troubled here. They may be stars, but as long as they keep treading water in bland stuff like this, the world may never know.
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Drowns in vanilla carnality.
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40A pastel-pretty and oh-so-dull coming of age tale.
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40Told from younger brother Doug's point of view, Phoenix's voiceover spans the length of the film and winds up making the images that unfold practically redundant.
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Inventing the Abbotts is pointless soap opera, anecdotal and superficial, mixing sibling rivalry, class conflict and tragic romantic entanglements in a style that mimics fictional life in the '50s more than it illuminates what went on.
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38Inventing the Abbotts would be a lot more fun were it a trashy Troy Donahue-Diane McBain vehicle ground out by Warner Bros. in 1960, the year this hormonally motivated high school-college romance mercifully concludes. [4 April 1997, p. 4D]
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30Too long winded and dull.
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20The goofy hysteria of something like "A Summer Place" was infinitely more entertaining and emotionally authentic than the distant smugness of this failed clone. [7 April 1997, p. 76]
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TerryO.8