On G List of Movie Reviews
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The Glass House (2001)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
9/21
9/21:
The high amount of manipulation shown in The Glass House has left me worn out.
It's a good thing that Leelee Sobieski retired from acting. She has the personality of a blank piece of paper. I can imagine
her answering an elaborate question with a short affirmative, setting off a long uncomfortable silence in the room with
hundreds of people.
In The Glass House, it's one of the most one-dimensional lead performances I've seen a teenage actress give. Leelee
Sobieski wears too much makeup in every scene including bedtime. Interestingly, she's never shown applying it on her face at
any point.
The first fifteen minutes has horrible editing which includes many rapid cuts. Then, things slow down, but I've figured out
what the jig was by the time Ruby had a meeting with various strangers during the wake. Thereafter, it's been one stupid
behavior after another. The last twenty minutes is one of the worst I've seen which includes two kids walking on the road
in the middle of nowhere. What's the benefit of that? They've sure moved on quickly from their parents' death.
California is well known for emancipation laws because of the child actors wanting to free themselves from parental control in
regard to their finances. Thus, Ruby is within her rights to seek it, and the trust fund is enough to take care of her. Then
again, she's dumb as a rock. To make matters worse, her brother is totally useless. The child actor playing him must have
gotten the job because of his looks, and he didn't have to do anything special.
For starters, Ruby should've thought of reaching out to his uncle in Chicago. She had the phone number but did nothing with
it for days. Every time she made a phone call, it's always inside the house. Why? She had plenty of chances to run
away or whatever but did nothing. Given her popular appearance, Ruby makes zero friends at the new school. At night, she
tries to change clothes in the hallway, but I must ask her: what's wrong with the bathroom?
I don't see how Ruby's guardians have the right to take over her trust fund; what's their legal authority to do so? In fact,
they didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary from the get-go and would've gotten the money easily by robbing the
orphans blind while being nice. On the other hand, why not sell the house and the cars to pay off the debt? Then, they can
make back the money through work.
The glass house looks huge which is definitely worth over ten million dollars, yet there's one room for the two kids. Hardly
likely. The title is supposed to be a metaphor, but there's literally glass all over the house and it has nothing to do with
the plot. After Ruby drove through the front gate which was shown intact days later, where did the guardians get the
money to have it repaired?
All in all, the filmmakers cited the 9/11 attack as the main reason for the box-office failure of The Glass House;
no...it's the movie that sucks.