'EVENING" IS filled with Oscar winners, past and probably future. Set largely in a stunning oceanfront mansion in Newport, R.I.
, it packs as many sunsets as it can into a two-hour movie. None of that is enough to hide the fact that this is "Beaches" and "Stella Dallas," stuffed into one lovely, well-acted "Notebook." A couple of mother-daughter combos give it cachet.
And the setting makes it as pretty as a postcard. Alas, it's as bland and predictable as that postcard, too. Vanessa Redgrave acts with her daughter, Natasha Richardson.
Meryl Streep's daughter, Mamie Gummer, plays her character as a young woman. Claire Danes is Redgrave's character as a young woman and Toni Collette plays Redgraves' character's other daughter. That's an embarrassment of talent called together to give life to Susan Minot's book, a romance novel as conceived by Marcel Proust.
Redgrave is Ann, an old woman breathing her last. Her daughters (Richardson and Collette) are by her side, hearing her hallucinations about Lila, Buddy and Harris from her past. In flashbacks, we meet them.
Lila (Gummer) is a richer-than-rich 24-year-old about to marry. Buddy (Hugh Dancy) is her often-drunk brother. Ann is his best friend, a college pal who was, in the 1950s, an aspiring cabaret singer.
And Harris (Patrick Wilson of "Little Children") is the dreamy doctor who makes all the hearts flutter. Glenn Close and Barry Bostwick are the parents of the bride and don't have enough moments to make their roles stick out. As the story bounces back and forth between 50 years ago and today, we learn how Ann tried to talk Lila out of marrying the wrong man and how Harris represents her own "first mistake.
" "Your first mistake is like your first kiss," Ann tells her daughters. 'EVENING" IS filled with Oscar winners, past and probably future.
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