Sadly Over-hyped

Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Wow... I'm truly stunned at how abysmal this movie really is. Jane Campion tortures both her characters and the audience in this excruciatingly bad black comedy/drama about a - to say the least - dysfunctional family. Comes off as a pretentious film school final project that reeks like a rancid cross-contamination between David Lynch and John Waters. Seemingly random, unengaging and disjointed things just occur (either deadeningly slow or at the tone of loud shouting) in a sordid little universe populated by either repellent loonies or lame wimps that I only wish to disappear from the screen as quickly as possible. No nuances, no character development, no humor to be found anywhere. In bits, I detect fine cinematography, but even there, it's mostly shot in a way that casts long shadows over the scenes. You'd have to be psychic to spot that this director was to make the masterpiece "The Piano" some years to follow. One of the easiest bottom scores of 1/10 I've ever handed out.

Director Jane Campion once said in an interview that while she was writing "The Piano" she thought that before she made such an adult film like that she would make a smaller and more personal film. So "Sweetie" is her most personal film and its about two sisters. The film starts out about Kay (Karen Colston) who is a shy and somewhat dysfunctional woman who has her tea leaves read and is told to look for signs of love and see's them in her friends fiance'. Somehow she manages to convince him to leave his fiance' and become her boyfriend. Later in the film as the two live together (But no sex!) Kays sister Dawn (Genevieve Lemon) drops in and creates all sorts of havoc. Dawn (AKA Sweetie) is also dysfunctional but mentally ill. Shifts in moods and very erratic behavior dominate the last quarter of the film and its here that we can somewhat see that one of the reasons Kay doesn't get along with Dawn is because she is such a free wheeler and Kay is not. Kay is jealous of this quality that Dawn possesses. The film is very offbeat but also uneven. Kays relationship with her boyfriend is curious. She goes to all the trouble of stealing someone else's boyfriend and when she gets him she is reluctant to be intimate. I wish their could have been more scenes of Kay and Dawn together in a more coherent fashion but mostly its scenes of Kay reacting in frustration at her sisters antics. I did like the way the film ended. The ending seems to establish the overall drive of the film and its leaves a dramatic mark on the story. Film is interesting to watch due to the fact that it was made a few years before "The Piano" so while die hard Campion fans will enjoy this more, the rest of you will have to depend on your open mind.

Quite a dark film that seems to lack the catharsis (or uplifting tones) of the later Campion's films. The film concentrates on psychological problems of Kay, strange, detached young women which, seemingly calm and shy, is able to shamelessly steal a just-engaged man from his fiancee. Kay's life with the boyfriend, however, turns out to be far from happy. What does she want? We do not know that until her younger sister Dawn, aka Sweetie, appears on the scene almost halfway through the film. Dawn has apparently been a spoiled baby in the family. The father even now speaks about her "talents", although he too must see that, in reality, she is a mentally handicapped person whose intellectual and emotional development has been arrested at the level of a 4-year old. Sometimes she is charming, sometimes threatening, but, most importantly, she is uninhibited and free (among other things, free to act on her whims). With the arrival of Dawn, Kay's great animosity towards her sister is immediately apparent. Instead of help and compassion of a "normal" older sister she only offers criticism and open hatred. Little by little we find what Kay wants: she wants to be Dawn. She wants to lose her repressions, she wants to be loved, admired and always forgiven, no matter what she does. Deep psychological analysis of abnormal relations between sisters reminds me of some Ingmar Bergman's works although "Sweetie" does not have the nordic broodiness.

Sort of a watered-down John Waters-type movie, this Australian film is not for everyone's taste. Talk about a dysfunctional family: Kay is a cold fish who steals a man who just announced his engagement to someone else, all because of a fortune-teller. "Sweetie", her younger sister, is a nymphomaniac, mentally unstable, selfish, and seemingly has the mind of a spoiled little brat. Her parents try to act as if all is not as bad as it seems. But life sucks in this family. I wondered how, with two seemingly "normal" parents, these two girls ended up the way they did. Guess it happens all the time, though.