DVD Release: Fireflies in the Garden

DVD Release Date: Feb. 7, 2012
Price: DVD $30.99
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

2008 drama movie Fireflies in the Garden has a whopping cast led by Julia Roberts (Sleeping With the Enemy), Willem Dafoe (Daybreakers) and Ryan Reynolds (The Change-Up) and yet it sat on shelves for years before being released in the U.S.

Inspired by a poem by Robert Frost, the film looks at three generations of the Taylor familyand the dysfunctional relationships between the domineering father (Dafoe) and his novelist son Michael (Reynolds), sister-in-law Jane (Emily Watson of Equilibrium and Hayden Panettiere of Scream 4) and others. Roberts plays Dafoe’s wife, who’s involved in a fatal  accident on the way to a family reunion.

The cast also includes Carrie-Anne Moss (Memento) and Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four).

Rated R, Fireflies in the Garden is the first feature film written and directed by Dennis Lee.

The movie did the rounds in theaters overseas, but it didn’t debut on the big screen in the U.S. until October 2011, when it had a very limited showing.

Despite the heavyweight cast, the film didn’t get approval from critics, who called it “glib, rushed and underdeveloped” (J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader), “trite” (Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News) and “cliche” (Lou Lumenick of the New York Post).

Not being released on Blu-ray for now, Fireflies in the Garden has only one special feature on its DVD:

• “A Flash of Life: The Making of Fireflies in the Garden.”

The trailer looks suitably dramatic. Here it is:

Buy or Rent Fireflies in the Garden
DVD	DVD	DVD