The packaging describes Love Liza as a "comic tragedy" and apparently some people feel that the movie is meant to be funny. Personally, I don't see whats funny about destroying yourself in a very anti-social fashion out of a pure self-pity but that didn't bother me so much.
What did bother me were the things this movie lacked. I had no sense of who the wife was or the relationship between her and husband and what factors may have driven her to commit suicide. Kathy Bates character (the dead wife's mother) is completely irrelevant as a result of this.
The romanticizing of Hoffman's gas huffing is little over the top. Okay, so his wife stuffed a rag in her exhaust pipe and killed herself. I don't see how that would drive a person to be obsessed with soaking rags in gasoline and inhaling the fumes as a form of escapism. Heroin addiction seems more commonplace than gas huffing.
To sum things up: Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor and delivers a strong performance. It's apparent that the director of this movie was much more concerned with artsy shots of freeways, Hoffman occupying his empty house and his run ins at gas stations and hobbyshops than developing the storyline. Plus, the run-ins with his brother-in-law (a token indy film weirdo) were completely unnecessary.
What did bother me were the things this movie lacked. I had no sense of who the wife was or the relationship between her and husband and what factors may have driven her to commit suicide. Kathy Bates character (the dead wife's mother) is completely irrelevant as a result of this.
The romanticizing of Hoffman's gas huffing is little over the top. Okay, so his wife stuffed a rag in her exhaust pipe and killed herself. I don't see how that would drive a person to be obsessed with soaking rags in gasoline and inhaling the fumes as a form of escapism. Heroin addiction seems more commonplace than gas huffing.
To sum things up: Philip Seymour Hoffman is a great actor and delivers a strong performance. It's apparent that the director of this movie was much more concerned with artsy shots of freeways, Hoffman occupying his empty house and his run ins at gas stations and hobbyshops than developing the storyline. Plus, the run-ins with his brother-in-law (a token indy film weirdo) were completely unnecessary.