The Sisters

Intelligent, observant entertainment designed for an adult audience.

Projects like this bring out the best in actors, who take salary cuts to work in Chekhov (even at one remove). What we can guess, watching the film, is that the same players would make a good job of "Three Sisters" but are undermined by the faculty club, which works like a hotel lobby. There's no way to sustain dramatic momentum here.

The Sisters may be worth a look, however, for the work of the magnificent Bello and Tony Goldwyn, who's never been better than as the married man with whom Marcia has an affair. Their final clench is pure, guilty-pleasure melodrama, which means it's not the least bit Chekhovian.

Insufferable characters make for an insufferable play or movie. The Sisters, a grueling family feud conceived by Richard Alfieri, proves the point.

Pretentious, stagy and over-the-top update of Chekov's "The Three Sisters."

A clumsy graft of Chekhovian high dudgeon and harsh, Albee-esque psychological realism that probably worked better onstage.

The result is an insufferable academic cocktail party of declamatory speeches coaxed to life in its middle stretch by the incredible Maria Bello, who wades in like a paramedic at a disaster scene.