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03/19/09
Diminished Capacity (2008)
31
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:9
Rotten:20
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: This low-key comedy about memory loss offers mild pleasures but is too bland to fully resonate.
Synopsis: After a concussion leaves him unfocused, short on short-term memory, and demoted from the political pages to the comics, Cooper (Matthew Broderick), a Chicago newspaper editor, travels home to... [More]
Starring: Matthew Broderick, Virginia Madsen, Alan Alda, Louis C.K.
Director: Terry Kinney
Reviews for Diminished Capacity
A slog through determined wackiness, it's apt to leave audiences cold.
07/07/08
The problem with this film ... is that it features too many other sad sack characters who ... contribute to an excess of sad-sackness.
07/03/08
It has moments of sweetness, but not enough poignancy or wit to turn it into the endearing art-house comedy that it aspires to be.
07/03/08
Top CriticGreat, just what we needed: another rote exercise in indie-feely humanism.
07/02/08
A mediocre effort that never really goes anywhere and never really pays off, trying too hard to be funny without delivering on the premises introduced over the course of the movie.
07/01/08
The milieu is interesting but there's too much acting (particularly by Alda) in this quasi-witty, semi-melancholy road comedy, perhaps a result of helmer Kinney's theatrical background and lack of directorial skills.
06/27/08
I wonder if all this worked better as a book. It begins modestly interesting, but becomes merely agitated.
07/10/08
A movie about memory loss shouldn't be so forgettable.
07/02/08
Sherwood Kiraly's slight script only makes this embarrassment of riches seem more embarrassing.
12/08/08
Bland indie comedy isn't very memorable.
07/02/08
A pleasant enough diversion, but DC will be bettered watched from the horizontal position of a couch, one to which the film seems all too eager to send you.
01/28/08
Top CriticSuffering from a diminished level of interest, do we know how to live up to a title, or what?
07/15/08
Plays like diminished comedy.
01/23/08
The actors look as if they’re having a reasonably fine time, but there’s no sense of commitment here, no sense that this was a movie that absolutely, passionately had to be made.
07/04/08
Top CriticStriving for low-key character comedy, Diminished Capacity ends up diminishing its returns.
07/03/08
It’s the kind of lite movie you go and see with your mom, and she’ll say she liked it -- but then a year later, you’re both trying to remember what it was even about.
07/01/08
Pure, unadulterated mediocrity.
07/01/08
Didn't we invent film festivals so we could sequester all the star-studded 'how I spent my summer vacation' indie film projects and keep them out of our arthouses?
07/10/08
A mild pleasure from one end to the other, but not much more.
07/04/08
Top CriticLatest News for Diminished Capacity
July 06, 2008:
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