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We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004)
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Movie Review by AJ 
July 24th, 2006
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This movie has a great cast, and I do mean great. Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Peter Krause, and Laura Dern are all extremely talented performers, and I was pleased as punch to see them all together in the same film. John Curran's direction is also great, and his film is replete with fantastic cinematography and wonderfully tricky editing. It looks like a masterpiece, walks like a masterpiece...it just can't talk like one, and that's why the blame (perhaps unfairly) gets laid on screenwriter Larry Gross, adapting from two short stories by the late Andre Dubus. The script is an overly talky (and I'm a big lover of the spoken word) mess which seems to get down the philosophical and metaphorical anxieties caused by the two amorous and unfaithful couples at the film's center--basically, Watts is with Krause but gets it on with Ruffalo and Dern is with Ruffalo but gets it on with Krause--but which just cannot get a handle on the emotional shockwaves the characters feel. Worse yet is how they're expressed through the dialogue; nary a word rings true, and at times, despite the actors' hardworking portrayals, I felt a bit like I was watching an amateur play. The actors deserve so much more than they're given, especially Ruffalo and Krause, whose characters are consistently the most underwritten, in particular Krause's. I hate these sad-sack writers in most pretentious character studies like this: They seem to hate writing, are never happy, and are determined that their work sucks. As a fledgling writer myself, I love writing and I treat it as a hobby that will one day turn into a career. So, when Krause, whom I loved on Six Feet Under, randomly decided to burn his novel after a hard day the likes of which are very commonplace, I was a mite despaired. Anyway, that's basically the gist of We Don't Live Here Anymore. It looks great and sports some fine performances, but the movie has the emotional depth of an episode of Jeopardy!
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