Remember Philip Baker Hall? Turns out he has cheated on his wife, Melinda Dillon. He has also (probably) abused his now-grown daughter, Melora Walters, who, like Moore, is also a big-time drug addict, only she's a coke fiend. Things are looking up for Walters, though, since an earnest cop, John C. Reilly, has a crush on her. (Hope he can put up with her leaving the room every ten minutes to snort another line). Reilly's duties as a cop including helping depressed former whiz kid William H. Macy get out of big trouble.
And the cast continues. Still remember Philip Baker Hall? His game show pits three adult contestants against three smart children. The adults are led by jerk Luis Guzman. Two of the kids are complete brats, the third is angelic boy genius Jeremy Blackman. Blackman's good behavior is punished by not letting him go to the bathroom, which leads to major childhood trauma.
How others will see it. Magnolia was the follow-up to young director Philip Thomas Anderson's undeservedly (yet predictably) acclaimed Boogie Nights. Magnolia was also acclaimed, for similar reasons, which include successful studio marketing, and a willful overlooking of the film's flaws by the film industry, critics, and fans. The latter have kept this showy, unpleasant film encamped within the imdb.com Top 250 for several years now. The best explanation is that they have been told its good, and play along.
How I felt about it. On the plus side (and a film that grades 53 always has positive aspects), the cast is exemplary. Tom Cruise, in particular, seems hungry for a Supporting Actor Oscar, and plays his dislikable, bad role model character with intensity. (Cruise was nominated but didn't win.) The fact that Robards died soon after the film's release adds poignancy to his character and performance. April Grace, blessed with an unusually credible role by the standards of the film, excels as a female interviewer of the misogynistic Cruise.
Now for the bad news. The running time of 188 minutes is too long. What should have been cut? For starters, let's eliminate the directorial whims: raining frogs, singalongs to the droning (and sometimes oppressively loud) Aimee Mann soundtrack, beginning and ending the film with an enactment of a well-known urban legend (a suicide jumper is shot from a window), and a close-up of Robards' lung (shades of Three Kings).
Then there's the unduly large cast. Jettison the characters of Julianne Moore and William H. Macy. We like the actors, but there's too much hand-wringing even without them. And as big as the cast is, it seems everyone uses the f-word in every other sentence. Not everyone talks like Richard Nixon, even if he was from California.