Pretty standard Sofia. Pretty clothes, Kirsten Dunst being cute, no substance. Particularly distressing is that the most compelling parts of the film are monotone voiceovers directly from the book. It's barely an adaptation, more like a dramatic reading set to a slideshow of 70s fashion.

Great period atmosphere, haunting performances.

This movie is superb. It's simply mind blowing that it was Sophia Coppola's first film. Of Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, and The Virgin Suicides, this was the last one for me to see, and it has convinced me beyond a doubt that she is one of the 2 or 3 top directors making movies today.

A well-made and faithful adaptation, but I didn't find it quite as interesting or important as most.

The book was better, but the movie was a good adaptation.

The film starts out as a wonderfully nuanced dark comedy satirizing the prim neatness of suburbia in a way that is eerily reminiscent of Blue Velvet. However, by the end of the first 45 minutes the whole marvelous contraption runs out of gas and we are left with a very well shot piece of ennui. This right here is the cure to insomnia.

Whilst Sofia Coppola never manages to conjure up an interesting message, the movie captures enough of that magical teen-sexuality to warrant a view. Woods has a great, small role as the absent-minded father, but it's really the girl's show. Dunst was never cuter, and even though many questions in the film remain agonizingly unanswered, you'll have no problem understanding the attraction between the young characters. Also great voice-over by Ribisi.

'The Seventh Continent'... for kids! It does a good job of not trying to understand motives, but rather portraying how impossible it is to understand. A lot of the quirky flourishes were really distracting.