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Cousins
Paramount // PG-13 // January 15, 2002
List Price: $24.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Cousins could be subtitled "three weddings and a funeral": like Four Weddings and a Funeral it plays on the way that people interact with each other at large social events. The storyline of Cousins starts off with two couples who are both late to a relative's wedding. As it turns out, their relative tardiness isn't the only thing that these characters have in common: in both cases, their marriage is on shaky ground.
When Larry (Ted Danson) and Maria (Isabella Rosselini) meet, they form an immediate connection of mutual liking. When they realize that their respective spouses (Sean Penn and William Petersen) are having an affair, they decide to pretend to be having an affair of their own, to give their cheating spouses a taste of his or her own medicine. But this game ends up taking a serious turn, causing both Larry and Maria to question the bonds that hold them in their present, failing marriages.
Indecision in filmmaking rarely brings good results, and Cousins is no exception: it's uneasily balanced between comedy and drama. The relationship between Rosselini and Danson is purely dramatic, an exploration of marital and extra-marital relationships, love, friendship, and commitment. In fact, this storyline has excellent potential for serious drama, as Rosselini and Danson seem realistic as the couple who find love by accident, and the relationship between their characters develops naturally and believably. But at the same time, there are several competing plot threads that appear to be in the story mainly or entirely for comedic effect, such as the storylines concerning Larry's father, his son's multimedia efforts, and the recurring joke of a gloom-and-doom relative. The two tones don't quite mesh with each other, with the result that Cousins feels like it doesn't know where it's headed.
Cousins almost manages to be a much better movie than it ends up being. Midway through the movie, the story appears to be on an interesting trajectory that will potentially take the viewer into honest and realistic emotional territory... but at the end, the Hollywood autopilot kicks in and drags the film into a predictable, cookie-cutter ending.
Video
The DVD transfer of Cousins offers an image that's attractive to look at. The anamorphic 1.85:1 image is bright, with the many sunny outdoor scenes looking very nice, and with darker indoor scenes also showing good contrast. The colors are bright, cheerful, and vibrant, and skin tones look natural. On the down side, the image is fairly heavily edge-enhanced and exhibits some blurriness in general, making for an image that's not as sharp as it could have been.
Audio
With a dialogue-based film like Cousins, the main concerns for the soundtrack are that it's clean and clear, and in this case the Dolby 5.1 track does the job. The sound is clean, with dialogue clearly audible and the music score well-balanced with the other elements of the soundtrack. Some low-key use of surround effects is present as well.
Extras
Cousins is your basic bare-bones disc; it has a decent menu interface but no special features.
Final thoughts
Cousins is pleasant but unexceptional. It's not bad light viewing, but it's too bad that director Joel Schumacher didn't try to stretch just a little further to make a more substantial drama. As it is, Cousins is bright and easy to take, both visually and thematically, but it doesn't offer anything really lasting.
When Larry (Ted Danson) and Maria (Isabella Rosselini) meet, they form an immediate connection of mutual liking. When they realize that their respective spouses (Sean Penn and William Petersen) are having an affair, they decide to pretend to be having an affair of their own, to give their cheating spouses a taste of his or her own medicine. But this game ends up taking a serious turn, causing both Larry and Maria to question the bonds that hold them in their present, failing marriages.
Indecision in filmmaking rarely brings good results, and Cousins is no exception: it's uneasily balanced between comedy and drama. The relationship between Rosselini and Danson is purely dramatic, an exploration of marital and extra-marital relationships, love, friendship, and commitment. In fact, this storyline has excellent potential for serious drama, as Rosselini and Danson seem realistic as the couple who find love by accident, and the relationship between their characters develops naturally and believably. But at the same time, there are several competing plot threads that appear to be in the story mainly or entirely for comedic effect, such as the storylines concerning Larry's father, his son's multimedia efforts, and the recurring joke of a gloom-and-doom relative. The two tones don't quite mesh with each other, with the result that Cousins feels like it doesn't know where it's headed.
Cousins almost manages to be a much better movie than it ends up being. Midway through the movie, the story appears to be on an interesting trajectory that will potentially take the viewer into honest and realistic emotional territory... but at the end, the Hollywood autopilot kicks in and drags the film into a predictable, cookie-cutter ending.
Video
The DVD transfer of Cousins offers an image that's attractive to look at. The anamorphic 1.85:1 image is bright, with the many sunny outdoor scenes looking very nice, and with darker indoor scenes also showing good contrast. The colors are bright, cheerful, and vibrant, and skin tones look natural. On the down side, the image is fairly heavily edge-enhanced and exhibits some blurriness in general, making for an image that's not as sharp as it could have been.
Audio
With a dialogue-based film like Cousins, the main concerns for the soundtrack are that it's clean and clear, and in this case the Dolby 5.1 track does the job. The sound is clean, with dialogue clearly audible and the music score well-balanced with the other elements of the soundtrack. Some low-key use of surround effects is present as well.
Extras
Cousins is your basic bare-bones disc; it has a decent menu interface but no special features.
Final thoughts
Cousins is pleasant but unexceptional. It's not bad light viewing, but it's too bad that director Joel Schumacher didn't try to stretch just a little further to make a more substantial drama. As it is, Cousins is bright and easy to take, both visually and thematically, but it doesn't offer anything really lasting.
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