INVENTING THE ABBOTTS

Recipe for a romantic drama: combine in a 1950’s Illinois small town; one rich family with three comely, headstrong girls; one poor family with two eligible, romantically determined boys; bake in an atmosphere of small town myth; and, serve to adult audiences everywhere.

INVENTING THE ABBOTTS begins as a high school-aged narrator, Doug Holt (Joaquin Phoenix), passes by the local Abbott mansion, where workers are constructing canopies for yet another private tennis court soiree in honor of one of the Abbott daughters. He returns to his widowed mother’s house, where he proceeds to paint fake Elvis sideburns on his face, to the scorn of his pseudo-sophisticate brother Jacey (Billy Crudup ). At the soiree, Doug meets Pamela Abbott (Liv Tyler), who jokes with him about the sideburns, betraying her affection. She confides to him that her father was giving this party to divert attention from the shotgun wedding of his eldest daughter, Alice (Joanna Going) to a steel magnate’s son, who got her pregnant unexpectedly. Pamela tells Doug that Alice is the “good daughter,” Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly ) is the bad daughter, and she “gets off the hook.”

Jacey is determined to sexually conquer saucy Eleanor, the “bad daughter,” who obliges his lust by consenting to meet with him clandestinely in his filling station garage. After one such meeting, where Pamela surprises the two lovers in the middle of a passionate kiss, Lloyd Abbott (Will Patton) forbids Eleanor to see Jacey anymore. Defying his wishes, Eleanor continues to consort with Jacey and gets in trouble with Lloyd. Lloyd sends Eleanor away to an insane asylum, which only incites Jacey’s lust for the Abbott girls all the more. He then sets his sights on the eldest daughter, Alice, when she returns home from her unhappy marriage to the steel magnate’s son.

Jacey succeeds in his conquest of newly divorced Alice, but Mr. Abbott again intervenes, warning him away from his daughters with a crude imperative that his rich daughters are too good for poor boys. Icy Mrs. Abbott (Barbara Williams), demonstrates antagonism toward the Holts with a hostile visit to the boy’s mother, Helen Holt (Kathy Baker). Then, to complicate matters all the more, Doug takes a disliking to Pamela Abbott due to a misunderstanding.

Against this backdrop of mutual antagonism, Eleanor Abbott and both Holt boys go away to Philadelphia to college. There, Jacey foists his unstoppable sexual urges on Eleanor, who, like her sisters, succumbs to his advances, alienating brother Doug, who knocks him down in an altercation. The dramatic question looms large: will a poor Holt boy be able to marry a rich Abbott girl, especially in view of the existence of a small town myth alleging an affair between Helen Holt and Lloyd Abbott? The film’s conflict of rich vs. poor is familiar, but dramatically fecund territory.

A father’s opposition to his daughters’ romantic choices recurs again and again in cinematic dramas, such as in GOODBYE COLUMBUS and THE GRADUATE . In INVENTING THE ABBOTTS, director Pat O’Connor manages to pull off an engaging ensemble piece with aplomb, as he did in his previous ensemble film, CIRCLE OF FRIENDS. He conveys the brutish snobbery of the Abbott Father with telling believability. Mr. Abbott has arbitrarily decided that his daughters are too good for the Holt boys and will not change his mind. In one revealing scene, Pamela Abbott confides to Doug Holt that if she had to choose between having money, or her father, she’d elect to be poor. So Doug Holt has to overcome what appears to be insurmountable romantic obstacles to romantic fulfillment with Pamela Abbott all on his own. INVENTING THE ABBOTTS is the story of how he achieves his objective.

Liv Tyler puts in a credible performance as Pamela Abbott, as do Jennifer Connelly and Joanna Going, who play her self-absorbed, privileged sisters, Eleanor and Alice Abbott. Joaquin Phoenix and Billy Crudup also put in yeoman performances as Doug and Jacey Holt . The parental supporting cast also performs adequately, but the story still lacks a crucial spiritual dimension.

There is no hint of spiritual devotion in either family, the Holts , or the Abbotts . This lack of spirituality does a disservice to believing moviegoers, because it implies that “normal” families don’t have religious affiliations at all. Perhaps a snob like Lloyd Abbott could be understood to hate God, because he lives for money. However, what about sensitive, caring Helen Holt? At Christmas, she does not even discuss worship services with her son. In an Illinois country town in 1957, a mother would at least broach the topic of church with her son, home for the holidays from college.

Thus, for all its dramatic effectiveness, INVENTING THE ABBOTTS fails to fulfill its potential to be inspiring as well as engaging drama because it omits any mention of Jesus. In Isaiah 62:5, God says, ”As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will Your God rejoice over you.”