Fireflies In The Garden (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

Fireflies in the Garden (15) Alison Rowat HH

Despite its starry cast, handsome setting and literary breeding – check out that Frostian title – Dennis Lee’s drama has the whiff of a TV movie whistling round its chops.

Fireflies in the Garden is the kind of emotionally charged family drama actors love because it affords them acres of room to emote; you can practically sense the moving aside of furniture as a big scene approaches.

Yet for all the sturm and drang on display, Lee’s debut feature is lacking in spark.

Willem Dafoe and Julia Roberts play an English professor and his wife. She’s saintly, he’s the very devil of a bully to his son and the aunt who spends a summer with them. Fast forward to decades later and a family reunion is in the offing.

As the prodigal son Michael (Ryan Reynolds) returns, and aunt Jane (Emily Watson) prepares to referee the inevitable clashes, an event occurs that shatters the uneasy peace and has the family thinking of the past once more. Dafoe as the father is too unrelentingly awful to be convincing, while Roberts makes the opposite mistake with her character.

Ryan Reynolds shows why his star is in the ascendant with a performance that’s solid and watchable, while Emily Watson twinkles like the trouper she is.

Along the way Carrie-Anne Moss (Matrix), and Ioan Gruffudd enter from stage left as Michael’s wife and family friend respectively. They too get a share of the angst on offer.

Lee’s picture moves with all the alacrity of molasses heading uphill. The sentiments on offer are just as syrupy, with each “life lesson” being accompanied by the manic tinkling of a piano.

Well intentioned, but tedious all the same.

Paul Greenwood's Review

Ryan Reynolds is Michael, a successful author heading back to his hometown for a family gathering that turns into a funeral when his mother (Julia Roberts) is killed in a car accident.

This is the cue for flashbacks to his troubled teen years and his confrontations with his bullying and disciplinarian father (Willem Dafoe) and his young aunt (Hayden Panettiere, and later Emily Watson).

With such a sprawling cast, you’ll spend more time working out who is who in each time frame rather than caring about any of them, as the recriminations mount concerning dark pasts and buried secrets that may come out with the publication of Michael’s new book.

It’s a stuffy and doom-laden affair with a meaningless title, inconsequential conflicts and a weak resolution that even this illustrious cast, with the exception of a playful Reynolds, can’t bring to life.