Review: Two Weeks

Two Weeks is essentially a how-to-die cine-manual for the illiterate.

Two Weeks
Photo: MGM

There are worse things than death to look forward to, like having to sit through The Barbarian Invasions a second time. Essentially a how-to-die cine-manual for the illiterate, Two Weeks observes what happens when a group of siblings come together to watch their mother die from cancer over the course of the film’s titular time span. Writer-director Steve Stockman crudely alternates between comedy and drama but, to his credit, he doesn’t pander to privileged sensibilities or shoehorn obscene post-9/11 commentary into his narrative. Sally Field is wildly self-conscious during footage her character’s eldest son records prior to her looming death march, but she doesn’t ham it up for Oscar approval like Javier Bardem did in The Sea Inside. In productions such as these that don’t take pains to distinguish themselves from the other indie flotsam clogging up the multiplexes, it’s easy to become sidetracked by, say, Ben Chapman’s resemblance to Bardem. Other distractions include Field’s Boniva commercial (the style of which is suggested by the actress’s conversations to the camera), Clea Duvall riding into town with all of the fury of the hurricane her character seems to have been named after, and Tom Cavanagh yaking up a storm as usual and cleaning up Field’s upchuck to a tune that’s probably titled “Cleaning Up The Feces That Just Came Out Of My Mother’s Mouth” on the movie’s soundtrack. Stockman piles cliché atop cliché to the bitter end, but there’s some genuineness to this messy little film’s vision of grief gripping and challenging its characters. The same can’t be said for the film’s desperate comic bits, none of which stick with you with the possible exception of Stockman’s attempt to change the way we think about the phrase “blow me.”

Score: 
 Cast: Sally Field, Ben Chapman, Tom Cavanagh, Julianne Nicholson, Glenn Howerton, Clea Duvall  Director: Steve Stockman  Screenwriter: Steve Stockman  Distributor: MGM  Running Time: 97 min  Rating: R  Year: 2006  Buy: Video

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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