Seven Minutes in Heaven

Directed by Linda Feferman, Seven Minutes in Heaven details the day-to-day exploits of three teenage friends (Jennifer Connelly’s Natalie, Byron Thames’ Jeff, and Maddie Corman’s Polly) and the complications that arise as each begins pursuing a romantic relationship. It’s exceedingly familiar subject matter that is, by and large, employed to disastrously underwhelming and tedious effect by Feferman, as the first-time filmmaker, working from a script written with Jane Bernstein, delivers a sluggish drama that suffers from an almost total lack of interesting, attention-grabbing elements – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by the actors’ competent yet bland work and proliferation of yawn-inducing subplots. (And it doesn’t help, either, that the performers portraying the various male characters look alike and are ultimately completely interchangeable.) The ensuing absence of forward momentum paves the way for a mostly endless and interminable midsection that contains few, if any, interesting, relatable encounters or episodes, which, in turn, ensures that Seven Minutes in Heaven crawls towards a predictably anticlimactic conclusion that handily cements its place as a justifiably forgotten ’80s teen drama.

* out of ****