Independence Day takes place in a small southern town where a waitress/aspiring photographer dreams of getting out and moving to L.A. to be like one of her photographer idols. Her departure is made complicated when she falls for your typical small town boy and her mother gets cancer.
For most of the film, Independence Day plays like your average "this small town is suffocating me and I have to get out" movie. No matter how good Kathleen Quinlan and David Keith are, they can't stop the film and their characters from feeling a bit been there, done that. It doesn't help that the first 20/30 minutes of the film are a bit on the sluggish side and it takes a while to warm up to the story and characters.
Then Dianne Wiest enters and something magical happens. It's the classic case of a supporting character and subplot stealing the entire show and becoming the main thing you remember about the film. Wiest plays Keith's mentally unstable sister who's in an abusive relationship with her husband (a truly scummy Cliff De Young.) It's Wiest's story that ends with the most surprising and heartbreaking turn of events and it's the one element you'll probably remember after the film is over.
I'd hate to make it sound like the rest of Independence Day is a slog of some sort, because it's not. It's well written and acted and there are several moving aspects of the main story as well (Quinlan's scene with Frances Sternhaggen as her mother where she's torn between going to L.A. or taking care of her is a winner), but the Wiest subplot is far more engrossing than the romance between Quinlan and Keith.
For most of the film, Independence Day plays like your average "this small town is suffocating me and I have to get out" movie. No matter how good Kathleen Quinlan and David Keith are, they can't stop the film and their characters from feeling a bit been there, done that. It doesn't help that the first 20/30 minutes of the film are a bit on the sluggish side and it takes a while to warm up to the story and characters.
Then Dianne Wiest enters and something magical happens. It's the classic case of a supporting character and subplot stealing the entire show and becoming the main thing you remember about the film. Wiest plays Keith's mentally unstable sister who's in an abusive relationship with her husband (a truly scummy Cliff De Young.) It's Wiest's story that ends with the most surprising and heartbreaking turn of events and it's the one element you'll probably remember after the film is over.
I'd hate to make it sound like the rest of Independence Day is a slog of some sort, because it's not. It's well written and acted and there are several moving aspects of the main story as well (Quinlan's scene with Frances Sternhaggen as her mother where she's torn between going to L.A. or taking care of her is a winner), but the Wiest subplot is far more engrossing than the romance between Quinlan and Keith.