Wow, and you thought YOUR family was dysfunctional! The ensemble cast in this movie delivers one of the most powerful screen performances you're likely to see, and it's not at all pretty. Meryl Streep as the drug addled matriarch of the Weston family delivers one of her finest performances ever. She's backed up by the sizzling anti-chemistry of Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson and Juliette Lewis as Violet Weston's daughters, attempting to cope with the suicide of their father and the building turmoil in their own personal lives.
Individually, it's easy enough to identify with most any of the principal players here, but nothing will prepare you for the main event that plays out at the dinner table when Ma Weston goes on her truth-telling jag. It's vicious and it's mean, and when Barbara Weston (Roberts) declares that she's now in charge, it sets up a new dynamic in the story that still leaves plenty of uncomfortable disclosures to be revealed. It's as if you could feel the hundred and eight degree temperature of the Oklahoma Plains searing through the screen to burn an indelible memory of the Weston's into your skull.
I could go on I guess, but words alone can't convey the impact of the story here. Deep and dark secrets unnerve the viewer at various points of the story, and just as you figure that things will go one way, they're suddenly upended to go another. It's like the 'boots for Christmas' story that Violet Weston told about her own mother; just when you think you're about to get a happy ending, the rug is pulled out from under you once more.
Individually, it's easy enough to identify with most any of the principal players here, but nothing will prepare you for the main event that plays out at the dinner table when Ma Weston goes on her truth-telling jag. It's vicious and it's mean, and when Barbara Weston (Roberts) declares that she's now in charge, it sets up a new dynamic in the story that still leaves plenty of uncomfortable disclosures to be revealed. It's as if you could feel the hundred and eight degree temperature of the Oklahoma Plains searing through the screen to burn an indelible memory of the Weston's into your skull.
I could go on I guess, but words alone can't convey the impact of the story here. Deep and dark secrets unnerve the viewer at various points of the story, and just as you figure that things will go one way, they're suddenly upended to go another. It's like the 'boots for Christmas' story that Violet Weston told about her own mother; just when you think you're about to get a happy ending, the rug is pulled out from under you once more.