Anybody who's even vaguely familiar with Peter Pan will know to expect arrested adolescence when introduced to a brother and sister pointedly named Jon and Wendy. But it's writer-director Tamara Jenkins's decision to change the family surname from Darling to Savage that truly speaks volumes. This no-bullshit approach well befits her subject, one so depressing and uncommercial that American movies have generally refused to go anywhere near it, even in passing: the trials of adult children who must suddenly care for a dementia-addled parent. Here, fortyish Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman, really working the schlump), a college professor specializing in Brecht, and Wendy (Laura Linney, surprisingly manic), a failed playwright subsisting on temp work, must put aside decades of interpersonal rancor in order to tend to their ailing father, Lenny (Philip Bosco), whom they both resent for having been a distant and demanding figure throughout their motherless childhood. Squabbling and recriminations ensue, as do heated discussions on the amenities of various nursing homes and the wisdom of allowing poor, fading Dad to show The Jazz Singer in a facility staffed largely by black immigrants.

The Savages has been rapturously received, not entirely without reason — Linney and Hoffman are both typically excellent, mining coarse nuggets of emotional truth from the sediment created by years of buried discontent.

Excerpt from Mike D'Angelo's review at NervePop located HERE