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# Drama a bit overboard in ‘Imaginary Heroes’
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/drama-a-bit-overboard-in-imaginary-heroes/
- Published: 2005-02-18T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:08:29.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

What starts out as a kind of poor man’s “Ordinary People” quickly deteriorates into an unintentional comedy of errors filled with virtually every staple of the after-school special genre. It wasn’t all that long ago that first-time writer-director Dan Harris was actually in high school, and his film is filled with the sort of unrestrained cynicism and angst you’d expect to find scribbled in the average disaffected suburban teenager’s diary. Harris piles on one crisis after another, gradually undermining the film’s flimsy foundation until the entire bathetic mess collapses. It’s too bad, because two solid performances by Sigourney Weaver and Emile Hirsch — as a mother and son in a dys-functional family that also includes dad Jeff Daniels and daughter Michelle Williams — get lost in the emotional schizophrenia. In addition to the teen suicide that sets the family-in-turmoil plot in motion, “Imaginary Heroes” features a host of other increasingly implausible inciting incidents. After a party in which a gal-pal discovers he’s being physically abused, Hirsch gets into a drunk driving accident; he’s also having serious issues coming to terms with his sexuality, leading to an uncomfortable ecstasy-fueled encounter with his best friend/neighbor; Weaver gets hooked on pot, then gets busted trying to buy some; Daniels quits his job and spends his days zoned-out on a park bench; Williams falls for a mental patient who hits on her mother; there’s another suicide (by one of Hirsch’s random classmates); infidelity; distraught teens quoting Pearl Jam lyrics; the suggestion of incest … name the misfortune, it’s in “Imaginary Heroes.” It’s like getting 10 overwrought dramas for the price of one. (Rated R for substance abuse, sexual content, language and some violence. Running time: 117 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 18, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021805.pdf?ref=smdp.com)