I had seen this movie a few years back but didn't retain much of it, except 'that' scene at about 17:44 with Jennifer Connelly. So I just watched it again on Netflix streaming movies. It is an even better movie than I remember it.Set in 1957 in the fictional town of Haley, Illinois, probably a suburb of Chicago, it is almost a 'romeo and juliet' story. Joaquin Phoenix is Doug Holt, the nice kid from the mediocre side of town, being raised by a single mom. He has an older brother, Billy Crudup as Jacey Holt. Jacey always seems angry, and often his anger is directed at the Abbott family. Will Patton is the father, Lloyd Abbott, from the successful side of town. He has three daughters and Jayce seems bent on taking each one of them to bed, which he accomplishes in a round about way.You see, Jacey grew up with several misconceptions about Lloyd Abbott. The first was that he took advantage of their mother and essentially stole a patent for a type of file cabinet, which resulted in his becoming wealthy. But in fact Doug eventually discovers that their dad had traded it away for a used car. The second was that Lloyd Abbott was responsible for their dad's death, when on a bet he drove on a frozen pond, and drowned when the ice broke. But the bet was their dad's idea, not Lloyd's.But all these misconceptions, plus probably others, drove Jacey's reckless behavior. For a while Doug tried to follow in big brother's footsteps until he realized better and became his own man. He always had a thing for the youngest Abbott sister, Liv Tyler as Pam Abbott, but embarrassed after letting Jacey seduce her she left town. Eventually Doug looked her up and, as the voice-over at the end says, a year later they were married and they had two daughters.Kathy Baker was good as the Holt mother, Helen. Jennifer Connelly was good as the middle sister Eleanor Abbott, who was sent off to a boarding school after her affair with Jayce was discovered.

Pat O'Connor's film, Inventing the Abbotts, from 1997, shows us teen life in the '50s, but not the teen life of Rebel Without a Cause or Blackboard Jungle. Instead, it's the story of a lower middle class family, the Holts, which consists of a single mom (Kathy Baker) and her two sons, Doug (Joaquin Phoenix) and Jacey (Billy Crudup) and the wealthiest family in their Illinois town, the Abbotts, consisting of Lloyd Abbott, his wife, and three beautiful daughters (Jennifer Connolly, Joanna Going, and Liv Tyler). Talk about well-cast; the two brothers could definitely be brothers and the three women could definitely be sisters.The Abbotts are connected to the Holts by an incident that occurred before Doug was born, which was shortly after his father was killed in an accident. Jacey is particularly obsessed with the family, especially Eleanor (Connelly), the "bad" Abbott daughter. And he really feels that the family owes him something. Doug, meanwhile, has an on and off relationship with Pam (Tyler).The two young men learn about life, loss, and letting go. Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic as the sensitive and romantic Doug; while Jacey provides us with the sex, Doug gives us the romance. Billy Crudup is excellent as his troubled brother, reaching obsessively for what he thinks he has to have. As their mother, Kathy Baker gives a lovely performance, every note right, as she always does."Inventing the Abbotts" has a quiet beauty about it, along with the heartache, anger, and raw emotion that the teen years always bring. Highly recommended. Don't look for anything to explode or huge action scenes; you won't find them here.

To be honest, the main reason I saw this movie was because I wanted to see Liv Tyler. To my surprise, here she plays an awkward, gawkish young girl whose appeal is overshadowed by that of her two older sisters. But there is something so engaging and charming about her simplicity, her shyness, and her ability to follow her own path in spite of her family's wealth and social standing.All the cast are terrific, with Kathy Baker, Jennifer Connolly, Liv, and Joaquin Phoenix taking top honors. It is the type of movie that transports you to another time and place, and to another age. You feel what it was like to be 18 in 1957: the class differences, the social constraints related to dating, all the bittersweet ache of young love.At its core, this movie is about the relationship of two brothers. The narration begins with that, and really that is the core that unites all the other subplots. It's a fascinating relationship too, because they are so different yet their paths end up crossing in so many ways. And at the end, it's clear that the viewer is going to be drawn to one (Doug), but yet the other (JC) is not condemned or criticized; you just come to understand that he is driven to do the asinine things he does by powers he cannot seem to tame within himself.I also have to say I was delighted by the fact that the protagonists (Doug and Pam) are modest and moral in their relationship, while the screwed up characters (JC, Eleanor) are promiscuous and amoral. It would have been easy to conform to stereotypes and have Doug and Pam in bed at the earliest opportunity, but the fact that they don't adds tension and drama and ultimately makes for an excellent story. There are a handful of instances of the F-word, and two brief sexual scenes, otherwise this would have been a great movie for younger teens as well.Overall, an excellent movie, badly underrated by IMDb users, and well worth the watching. I gave it 8 stars.

SPOILERS:This soft spoken, slow moving, almost arty tale of two families, set in the fifties, is an unusual and very engrossing movie. When I saw this, I started off rather impatient for it to speed up and get where it was going at a brisker pace. While the pace never really takes off as much as I would have liked, the story does gain momentum and the characters become more fully realized as you watch. It just takes some time.In terms of my thoughts on this film I will say I didn't love it nor did I dislike it. I was a little let down after as I thought I would have liked a bit more then I did. But it really is the epitome of a movie that grows on you and I will say I was very touched by the end of the film. It's a tough movie to give a rating to because I kind of get the feeling I might like it more if I see it a second time. But I will say what my primary likes and dislikes were.First the dislikes. There was so much that was abstract and so many things that were never explained fully or at all. I had a lot of questions at the end. So did the group of people I saw this with. I wont get into the list of those things as there are a lot and this review would be way to long but suffice to say it was probably more then half a dozen things and these were major plot points. There's a difference between ambiguity and complete vagueness over key plot elements and I felt this movie had more of the latter.Another oddity that I didn't care for was the Strong resemblance between Doug and Jc. Now Crudup and Phoenix do not look much alike in real life but in this movie it seems nearly impossible to tell them apart. Therefore in the beginning when everything was unfolding I could not tell at times which brother was on screen at any given moment. And my friends felt that too. The resemblance between them was to much.Also the narration added to the movie's element of confusion.Key characters didn't get enough screen time. One of my friends had already seen this and shocked me by accidentally revealing in the movie that Jennifer Connoly's character was all but gone after her dad ships her out of town. I had assumed she would be back as a key character. I was very disappointed when this was not the case.Alice gets little to no screen time. Who is she as a person? We are really never told. Pam played by Liv Tyler was supposed to be a sympathetic character but she wound up really annoying me as well as some of my friends. There was so much game playing with her and Joaquin Phoenix the whole movie started to be about them. They sure did have chemistry but that took away from other characters' screen time. And the mother's story was fascinating, she was fascinating and Kathy Baker is my pic for most Oscar caliber performance. We should have seen more of her and her story as well. And there was no confrontation between JC and ....well....anyone. I thought the movie was building toward that but other then the whole Pam drama we really never see much of that on screen. I thought there would be a confrontation between him and the mother. Also I really REALLY wanted a confrontation between the mother and Mr. Abbott as well as someone to tell off Joan, without a doubt one of the most dislike able characters I've seen in awhile. But there isn't anything like that and maybe that's to be expected because the movie is kind of..for lack of a better word..soft spoken.Then there is the predictable element. As soon as Kathy Baker's character had that cough I knew something was gonna happen to her and that scene at the end(writing "I love you" on the glass) as sweet and poignant as it was, was so sugar sweet and predictable and didn't really go with the movie. And the movie ends kind of abruptly as well.Now for the likes...great acting. In fact the acting was just superb...by everyone. Strong on mood and atmosphere. Good running time(long enough but not to long.) Poignant storyline. Poignant(that word again!), believable characters and a certain bittersweet element that made it very believable as well as tremendous chemistry between Liv and Joaqueen, and in spite of the negatives a really interesting storyline.It is the story that hooks one in and despite all I did not like about it, I still became really engrossed as the movie went on. I think this movie's above average and the cast worked very well together. Everyone was believable in their respective roles. It will never be one of my favorites but it definitely is not your typical movie. 7 of 10.