Review: Imaginary Heroes

Okay i've got about 1 day until i leave for Reading festival and i thought i should leave a review on here, and this is for a film that i've been meaning to review ever since i saw it and it's a review of a film that was reccomended to me (and i always love to review those ones the most) so here we go:

Oh, firstly, i'm crap with punctuation, but i'm working on it.


Imaginary Heroes begins to tell the tale of a suburban family who's lives have gone to the worst after the suicide of one of the sons in the family, everyone in the family blames it on themselves and they get up to many ill deeds afterwards in order to attempt to keep some sort of sense of order in their family and support their sadness.

Imaginary Heroes starts off well, it has an interesting idea and that something like a suicide would happen in a normal suburban town is quite major and heavy to take on but neverthless it's interesting to see how everything is going to go, that is until it starts to unveil a lot more to the audience and more problems between the family seem to erupt and it's because of this that there is never enough focus on one issue to make it interesting.

With a mass of ethical issues shown in this film it's hard to simply ask any ethical question at all that could bring up any reason for the audience to be stunned or at least think about what the films message is. The main problem is this film appears to have no single idea, it's extremely hard to work out whether it's a chance for every single ethical issue to be shoved into one to try and make an 'Ethic Movie' or whether it's a chance to see some amazing acting by challenging the problems that could happen in life.
Maybe this film should stick to asking the question of 'How is it that a family falls completely apart?' and for some very short moments in the film it does do that, but it is hardly consistent and justs adds another issue which will not be brought out and explained properly to make this a good film.

I found watching this film was like watching 'Imaginary News' wherein it broadcasts it's problems to the world and goes on telling people about them but never explains them and says because lots of bad things are happening you should be stunned, without knowing why, well if you're going to make a film which puts this much issues on it's plate you're going to need a lot of Why!

Though the reasons for everything in the film are because of the sons suicide it never stops to say "this happened because of the sons suicide" it just assumes the audience will be able to take a massive leap and somehow work a tangled link between two completely different ethical problems, this could be a good thing, but they've completely forgotten that the audience like to be told why, it adds a layer of interest to a film.

There is never a moment of just plain grief in this film, for some reason grief has to be shown by drugs and lying instead of sadness and crying, and it's because of this that it makes this film extremely unconvincing.


I was impressed by Jeff Daniels performance in this film, and it is the lack of his character that allows him to impress the audience on a higher level than everyone else in the film, he is portrayed as being a guilt carrying father who eventually must do all he can to keep his family together, he portrays what are some of the best scenes in this film and make them near enjoyable because of his acting, but it is nowhere near enough to keep this film together.

I honestly think i would of enjoyed Imaginary Heroes if it was a film that questioned peoples beliefs on suicide and peoples reactions to it but only one scene does this, though it's an okay scene it doesn't support the film enough to give it enough of a foundation to support the heavyness of it's multiple ethical questions and the whole films comes towering down and creates a mess of ethical issues thrown around.

Imaginary Heroes is like going to a drug dealer with no money, you'll get to have a look at the good stuff but never get even close to touching upon it or experiencing it in full.

Rating: ***/*****
What it needs: to stick with one idea and work upon it
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