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At first you can’t believe it. Someone managed to gather trophy actresses like Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, Claire Danes, Toni Collette, and Vanessa Redgrave and get them all into the same movie? Yes, someone did. It’s easier to understand this casting feat once you hear about the filmmaking team. The director Lajos Koltai has previously helped iconize actresses as a cinematographer. He significantly boosted Monica Bellucci’s fame with Maléna (and received an Oscar nomination for his troubles). He also recently trained his lens on Annette Bening’s every gesture and emotion in her Oscar run for Being Julia. Evening is his adaptation of the novel by Susan Minot. Minot herself, along with Michael Cunningham author of The Hours (another actress-filled bouquet tossed to moviegoers), wrote the screenplay.

Evening is a bifurcated story about a woman on her deathbed named Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) and that same woman in her youth (Claire Danes) at a wedding. The present day story is but a window to the past and consists mostly of scenes of Redgrave sleeping or moaning in bed or having twee hallucinations. Meanwhile her daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) argue with each other about their own lives and how much they should ask the mother about her past -- they’ve never heard these names she keeps whispering. The names the dying mother is reflecting on are all old friends: Harris (Patrick Wilson) is a doctor who Ann fell for. Ann’s best friends, a waspy brother and sister named Lila and Buddy (Mamie Gummer and Hugh Dancy), also love Harris in ways that aren’t immediately clear. They're all gathered at the family home (Glenn Close and Barry Bostwick are the parents) for Lila's wedding. Much drama ensues between the young friends and lovers. As is always the risk with two part films, one part is far more interesting than the other and the transitions between the two are either painfully obvious (fade to just what we were talking/thinking about!) or unusually awkward ('OK. I guess we're back here now').

The wedding portion of the movie is more interesting though it takes its sweet time getting there and is often derailed by an uneven batch of performances. Claire Danes came to fame on tremulous teenage emotion in television's My So Called Life and later in movies like Little Women. Her tears were tremendously moving. But as an adult actor she doesn’t appear to have matured. She’s several times too fussy and contemporary in this role, never letting her hands or her face relax. One wishes someone would take her hand and tell her to breathe long before anything dramatic has occurred to warrant the fidgety body language. Glenn Close, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be struggling with her role but rather just opting for full blown caricature (she's a gorgon matriarch). The rest of the actors are pleasantly able if not particularly memorable, apart from Hugh Dancy who is terrifically vulnerable as the needy Buddy. In truth he’s as fidgety as Danes but he has an excuse: his character is drunk for the whole movie.

In the present day material there’s much less of interest to be found. The ever dependable Toni Collette wrestles a character, however unlikable, from the screenplay but the actors are wasted. Vanessa Redgrave is boring (Vanessa Redgrave!) rolling about in bed for almost the entire running time. Natasha Richardson has a thankless role and lacks Collette’s determination (or perhaps her experience) at finding needless of interest in a haystack of clichés. Eileen Atkins is also saddled with an uninteresting part, a nurse, and has to act through poorly visualized hallucinations in something like a Disney ball gown. Meryl Streep (Mamie Gummer’s own mother) shows up very late in the film and though her thesis-loaded cameo “There are no mistakes!” is affecting, at least in the context of her one scene, it’s too little too late to rescue Evening from itself.

Evening has a precious and rather nonsensical tagline “her greatest secret was her greatest gift” and its thematics are as muddled as the tagline. Is this a movie about regrets or a movie about there being no mistakes? It would be fine to be both, ambiguity being so welcome and in short supply in the movies, but the dialogue never sounds anything less than obvious and stilted even when its point remains unclear.

The best thing that can be said for Evening is that it may give discerning viewers a newfound appreciation of how difficult both parallel dramas and ensemble pieces are to pull off. No matter what minor qualms one may have about The Hours for example, which juggles three separate mirrored characters and periods, it’s unquestionably masterful in comparison. Evening’s two halves of the same whole structure is just as awkward and lopsided as last year’s George Reeves murder mystery Hollywoodland, which also wasted its talent. Large ensembles need a strong directorial vision to stay coherent and that's lacking as well. It often plays like the actors are controlling each individual scene -- you’re watching ten movies instead of one movie with ten actors. And however potent their screen presence (Hello, Glenn Close), this individual showcasing is not in the best interest of the movie entire.

At first you can’t believe that so much talent has been gathered for one movie. But by the end of this awkward deathbed reverie you can’t believe your eyes or ears that this is what they’ve done with that abundance. It’s not particularly pretty to look at (sometimes it errs on the side of Hallmark card pretty with the colors too saturated and glossy, sometimes not) and the scattershot acting and uninspired dialogue aren't pleasing to the ears. Evening may turn out to be the summer’s biggest disappointment for those looking for an alternative to the blockbusters surrounding it.