One of last year’s most eagerly anticipated films, John Wells’ film of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winning August: Osage County met with mixed reviews at last September’s Toronto Film Festival from which it never really recovered. Part of the problem was the film’s marketing as a dark comedy which it is not.

The film is a heavily corrosive drama about the disintegration of a family. What humor there is in it is of a gallows nature as played up in the film’s trailer and Oscar clips. Although it mines the same territory as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , the film doesn’t quite reach the same dramatic heights.

Meryl Streep pulls out all the stops as the matriarch from Hell with fellow Oscar nominee Julia Roberts nearly matching her as her eldest daughter, leaving the remainder of the large cast little to do, despite which several of them have a moment or two in which they shine. Margo Martindale as Streep’s sister and Chris Cooper as her fed up husband both have a strong late scene as do Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson as Streep’s other daughters. Ewan McGrgor as Robets’ husband; Abigail Breslin as their daughter; Dermot Mulroney as Lewis’ latest squeeze and Benedict Cumberbatch as Martindale’s timid son have less to do and Sam Shepard as Streep’s alcoholic husband is killed off too early in the proceedings to have much impact. Misty Upham has a nice bit as Streep’s caretaker.

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