Fireflies in the Garden: Critic Reviews

Lee doesn't trust his storytelling or the audience.

A sickly sweet family drama stuffed with exceptionally high-profile performers - so much so that they threaten to overwhelm it just by their presence.

Despite an A-list roster, the performances are universally one-note, a fact largely attributable to a script overflowing with blunt dialogue and heavy-handed symbolism.

A dreadful exercise in navel-gazing that resides in a particularly trite corner of Pat Conroy-ville.

A fraught family drama that shows us the same family in past and present, 22 years apart. It might have been more effective if it had followed a chronological order.

This histrionic family drama must have looked good on paper to attract such a big-name cast, but on the screen it comes off as glib, rushed, and underdeveloped.

Despite the mega-wattage of pic's starry cast, theatrical prospects seem dim for this clumsy melodrama, which looks and sounds no better than an average made-for-cabler.

A dispiriting rehash of dysfunctional family cliches that seems to last longer than Thanksgiving Day dinner.

The emotional effectiveness varies from moment to moment between not pushing too hard or simply not pulling hard enough.

The movie is one long argument, tiresome and repetitive, that produces more heat than light.

"Fireflies" is probably too convoluted to pave the way for more roles of this sort, but watching Reynolds get inside Michael's pain, you hope it won't be long until something will.

An unrelentingly grim drama about yet another dysfunctional family.

The actors are all good and a few scenes -- an opening family argument, a crucial battle when Michael finally fights back -- are painfully moving.

This locally shot weeper is unhappy in myriad ways, few of which manage to coalesce around its heart-stung core.

The constant shifting between past and present is handled so badly that it adds absolutely nothing to the proceedings.

This stale drama is finally getting a limited release and will prove just how limited it is to the poor saps who pay to see it.

Just when you're hitting your tolerance breaking point for these people and their nonstop bellyaching and yelling and baffling hatred for one another, the equally baffling reconciliation kicks in. What just happened?

It just comes off a little false.

Julia Roberts plays ultra-sensitive artiste Ryan Reynolds' noble mother-and that should basically tell you all you need to know about this misguided soapy bunch of bollocks which somehow made its way off the shelf into theatres.

[A] middling effort about the fights and reconnections experienced by a family gathered due to an unexpected tragedy...

The relationships are lived-in and complex, with the same hopelessness that we find in real life. People don't change.

Has all the personality and forward momentum of a cardboard box.

Those who naturally gravitate to this syrupy genre shouldn't be disappointed, as Fireflies in the Garden is consistent with tender moments and agonized recollections.

nothing emotional going on inside