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IMDbPro

Life During Wartime

  • 2009
  • R
  • 1h 38m
IMDb RATING
6.4/10
7.6K
YOUR RATING
Life During Wartime (2009)
Ten years have passed since a series of shocking and catastrophic revelations shattered the world of the Jordan family.  Now, ghosts circle and loom, trouble and console as sisters Joy (Henderson), Trish (Janney), and Helen (Sheedy) are each embroiled in their own unique dilemmas as they struggle to find their place in an unpredictable and volatile world where the past haunts the present and jeopardizes the future.
Play trailer2:06
2 Videos
77 Photos
ComedyDrama

Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.Friends, family, and lovers struggle to find love, forgiveness, and meaning in an almost war-torn world riddled with comedy and pathos.

  • Director
    • Todd Solondz
  • Writer
    • Todd Solondz
  • Stars
    • Shirley Henderson
    • Allison Janney
    • Ally Sheedy
  • See production, box office & company info
  • IMDb RATING
    6.4/10
    7.6K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Todd Solondz
    • Writer
      • Todd Solondz
    • Stars
      • Shirley Henderson
      • Allison Janney
      • Ally Sheedy
    • 38User reviews
    • 146Critic reviews
    • 69Metascore
  • See more at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 3 wins & 9 nominations

    Videos2

    Life During Wartime
    Trailer 2:06
    Watch Life During Wartime
    Life During Wartime
    Clip 1:11
    Watch Life During Wartime

    Photos77

    Allison Janney in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Allison Janney and Michael Lerner in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Charlotte Rampling in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Paul Reubens and Shirley Henderson in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Ciarán Hinds in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Allison Janney and Dylan Riley Snyder in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Ally Sheedy in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Michael Kenneth Williams in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Dylan Riley Snyder in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Ally Sheedy and Shirley Henderson in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Michael Lerner in Life During Wartime (2009)
    Life During Wartime (2009)

    Top cast

    Edit
    Shirley Henderson
    Shirley Henderson
    • Joy
    Allison Janney
    Allison Janney
    • Trish
    Ally Sheedy
    Ally Sheedy
    • Helen
    Michael Kenneth Williams
    Michael Kenneth Williams
    • Allen
    Roslyn Ruff
    Roslyn Ruff
    • Waitress
    Michael Lerner
    Michael Lerner
    • Harvey
    Dylan Riley Snyder
    Dylan Riley Snyder
    • Timmy
    Ciarán Hinds
    Ciarán Hinds
    • Bill
    Renée Taylor
    Renée Taylor
    • Mona
    Rebecca Chiles
    • Hostess
    Paul Reubens
    Paul Reubens
    • Andy
    Emma Hinz
    • Chloe
    Charlotte Rampling
    Charlotte Rampling
    • Jacqueline
    Gabriel Quilichini
    • Waiter
    Rich Pecci
    Rich Pecci
    • Mark
    Gaby Hoffmann
    Gaby Hoffmann
    • Wanda
    • (as Gaby Hoffman)
    Carmen Marie Colon Mejia
    • Sarah
    Fernando Samalot
    • Eddie
    • Director
      • Todd Solondz
    • Writer
      • Todd Solondz
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      A sequel to Todd Solondz's movie Happiness (1998), but with entirely re-cast characters.
    • Goofs
      The plane has no name or identifying number on its outside, as mandated by ICAO, the international aviation agency.
    • Quotes

      Trish: Are you seeing anyone?

      Mark Wiener: No, I'm more focused on China. Everything else is history. It's just a question of time.

    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Salt/Get Low/Ramona and Beezus/Life During Wartime (2010)
    • Soundtracks
      Excerpts from the original motion picture Score to Happiness
      Composed by Robbie Kondor

    User reviews38

    Review
    Review
    Featured review
    4/10
    Let's hope the next Solondz film isn't a "spiritual sequel"
    First off, while I'm not a fan of everything Solondz has done, I consider Happiness one of my all-time favorite films. Thus, I was really looking forward to Life During Wartime, but after the film was over, I ended up wishing that Solondz had just left Happiness alone. It feels like a direct-to-video exploitation release, or maybe even an especially polished but ultimately off-model fanfic selection in an alternate universe where Happiness somehow holds the stature of Harry Potter.

    I am OK with the decision (probably forced, given the current stature of folks like Philip Seymour Hoffman) to recast everyone involved. But given that this is effectively billed as a spiritual sequel, it's hard to get past some of the resulting serious discrepancies in performance and character. Ally Sheedy, Allison Janney, Claran Hines and Michael K. Williams all turn in otherwise-good performances that unfortunately have very little in common with their characters' original personalities, making believable continuation impossible. Dylan Snyder's Timmy represents a new character that effectively replaces the role of Billy in Happiness, but he's nowhere near as believable or likable as that character was.

    Shirley Henderson, in particular, totally misses the tone and purpose of Jane Adams in the role of Joy, who was perhaps the only "sympathetic" character in the original (other than Billy). We no longer experience Joy as a sweet, lovable granola-crunchy dreamer and world-worn lifelong loser. Instead, Henderson comes off as some kind of generally-emotionless whispering wee faerie with none of Adams' warmth or ability to generate pathos. I do, however, greatly enjoy Paul Reubens' spot-on performance in the place of Jon Lovitz's original Andy-- although Andy's role in this movie is now inexplicably central, given how little he really mattered to Joy past the first half-hour in Happiness.

    It's hard for a Happiness fan to get past the labored and extremely drawn-out exposition that results from all these character discrepancies. You get the feeling that Solondz is having to take unusual pains to catch us up on the story, and to get us to buy New Actor Y in the role of Old Actor X. The movie starts to finally lift up out of these dregs in the last half hour or so, just in time to make us wonder what the point was, and/or why he didn't just create an entirely new universe with his entirely new cast to save himself (and us) all the trouble. I can't imagine a viewer who has never seen Happiness would find its first two-thirds any more satisfying for all the effort.

    Most troublingly for those who can't help but compare (and appropriately so, given the "spiritual sequel" billing), Happiness is a darkly hilarious movie, with most of the humor coming from the unspoken sadness and/or maliciousness of its desperate characters' interactions. Life During Wartime simply isn't funny, and isn't similarly "subtle." It's melodramatic, almost soap-opera-like in tone, with few of the wonderfully dissonant, squirm-in-your-chair moments that made Solondz' '90s works so entertaining (and so fun to show to the uninitiated). It often feels like we're being hit over the head with the "purpose" of each character in Wartime, rather than letting their actions / words simply speak for themselves as it was in Happiness.

    This might have been a somewhat OK movie if it had been a fresh start with no baggage from Solondz' masterwork. Obviously, it's hard for any director / producer / screenwriter to escape from their widely-beloved past works if they choose to do something different. But in this case, Solondz actually *chose* to bring that baggage along, and dares fans of the original to make comparisons (as is immediately evident from even the opening scene and credits to anyone who remembers Happiness). I'm not sure if this was a cynical effort on the part of Solondz-- who has had documented troubles getting funding for his 00s movies-- to cash in on the relatively small Happiness fanbase, giving them a movie that they "have to see," even though these two films ultimately have very little in common.

    Solondz' more recent work in general has been disappointing to me, but his misguided effort to "continue" Happiness has been by far the biggest and most bitter disappointment yet, failing to add anything new, interesting or even tone-appropriate to the universe he wants us to revisit. I desperately hope he's done making "spiritual sequels" now, and will have something really new to say (hopefully as funny as his old stuff) when his next project rolls around.
    helpful•40
    16
    • match-3
    • Sep 20, 2010

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • April 16, 2010 (Italy)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Werc Werk Works
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Untitled Todd Solondz Project
    • Filming locations
      • Puerto Rico
    • Production company
      • Werc Werk Works
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $4,500,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $281,447
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $30,507
      • Jul 25, 2010
    • Gross worldwide
      • $807,162
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Technical specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 38 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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