Imaginary Heroes (2004)

What makes it different from others?

Load of rubbish!!

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

"Imaginary Heroes" takes us through that often treaded path of a suicide in the family and its aftermath. Dan Harris directs a strong cast which manages to redeem his extremely lacking screenplay. It's a screenplay littered with holes and devoid of any real emotional logic. But still I found myself watching till the end, largely thanks to the performances.Jeff Daniels is in unshaven, hangdog mode. We've seen in all before, but it is effective. Emil Hirsh basically reprises his role of both "Wild Iris" and "The Mudge Boy". Yet another teenage boy detached and lost following a death in the family, with the added twist of an uncertain sexuality. He's an appealing young performer and does well in the role, but it is definitely time to let go and try something else.And then there's Sigourney Weaver. After too many forgettable roles in equally forgettable movies, one could be forgiven for forgetting just how good she can be. Somehow in this deficient vehicle, Weaver manages to create a wonderfully accurate characterization. It's a subtle, often humorous and always convincing performance and the only real that I stuck with "Imaginary Heroes" to the end.

Watching this film is often not a pleasant experience, but then it isn't meant to be. The main protagonist, Tim, seems very passive - a sort of 'everyman' character, pushed around by life - whereas I wanted to slap both his mother and his father more than once. However as the film went on it became obvious that everyone had a good reason for behaving the way they did; everyone was harbouring a secret, and sometimes more than one. I don't agree with the other commenters who felt the ending was too neat; there was at least one major plot-line unresolved - i.e., what happens to Tim's relationship with Kyle in the light of Tim's new knowledge about his father? The whole Tim/Kyle dynamic was beautifully done. Their immaturity in dealing with their feelings for one another worked superbly in the context of their ages. It also informed the darker thread of Tim's relationship with Matt, and if there's a standout performance in the film for me it has to be Kip Pardue playing against type as the tortured older brother.The only quibble I have is that I couldn't quite see why Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels, as the parents, would ever have been attracted to one another in the first place. They were both excellent, but somehow just failed to convince me that they ever were or ever could have been a married couple.It's an uncomfortable film, certainly not a compilation of familiar clichés, but it has a lot in common with "Monster's Ball" in the way it stays in the memory, provokes thought, and ultimately gives one hope even for the most dysfunctional of relationships.

To have to wait all that time to find out who's clobbering Tim? And it went on and on with dreary people with dreary lives. If I had watched it alone I would not have made it through the first hour. Excellent acting of course from the actors, except (not as an actor but as character) Jeff Daniels was not believable in in change or when he was in the hospital with the wife. And then, boom, at the end, everything's tickety-boo and hunky dory. The things that went on in that family were too monumental to get off that easy. And nutty neighbors didn't add to the feeling. Just because there were no explosions or chases didn't make this into a very good film.

===========BIG SPOILER================================== This is a terrible movie with no likable characters. So many clichés and senseless scenes. It needs a good editor but then there might not be any movie left. Please save your two hours. The only decent and unpredictable scene in the movie was when the younger brother refuses to stop his brother from killing himself. The description read "moments of dark comedy". Perhaps I missed those when I blinked. The horrible characters start right with the funeral. The funeral goers are laughing and complaining about the food while at the funeral of a very young man who has committed suicide? Then the father makes digs at the only son left? Right at the funeral? How is it that the next door neighbor whose husband cheated on her with Sigourney Weaver's character is the bad guy for telling the husband? The father doesn't even know his son can play the piano though everyone else around him seems to know he is a great pianist. The movie tries to shove every dramatic cliché possible into one movie: father over-driving athletic son to succeed, dysfunctional family losing a chosen son to suicide, the son left feeling lost and alone, drugs, marital affairs, child conceived via affair but raised as husband's son, incest, homosexual tendencies, bullies, possible terminal illness, etc, etc, etc. DO NOT WASTE YOUR 2 HOURS.