Movie Review: 'Union Square' -- 2 stars

Union Square
2 stars
Directed by Nancy Savoca
Starring Mira Sorvino, Tammy Blanchard
Not Rated

"Union Square," a drama about sisters set in and around the titular NYC location, forgets a cardinal rule of filmmaking: We don't want to spend 80 minutes with awful people.

Nancy Savoca's well-intentioned movie, about the awkward, unexpected reunion of sisters Lucy (Mira Sorvino) and Jenny (Tammy Blanchard), is undone by the fact that both protagonists are obnoxious caricatures.

Lucy, clad in tight dresses and tacky boots, is prone to ear-splitting shrieking. Frosty Jenny, ashamed of her Bronx upbringing, gives off tightly-wound WASPy airs and has told her fiance (Mike Doyle) that she's from Maine.

The film begins broadly, with Lucy suffering a breakdown of sorts in the park before surprising Jenny in her apartment. There, Lucy tortures her long-lost sister by cluelessly making a wreck of the place. The culture clash is entertaining, while Jenny's simmering anger intriguingly hints at a difficult past and foreshadows some second- and thid-act dramatic pyrotechnics.

But "Union Square" simply doesn't deliver on that promise. When events come to a head, Savoca's film devolves into dramatic mush. Plot developments make little sense and the script ups the whining quotient to such an extent that the already one-note characters become downright intolerable.