There are independent films that I believe are funded on premises that betray certain filmmakers' original intentions. Funny Games was a truly ambitious work with long cut-less shots of despair, and genuine horror, but was probably funded on the “cool” idea of the villains being able to break down the third wall, and interact with the audience. In what could have been an audience's observation of a believable crime (and an extremely well-made one), turned into a purposely unbelievable curiosity. The filmmakers thought they meld the two movies together and still succeed, but the two ideas are just far too incompatible to really work.

The Secret Lives of Dentists is, I believe funded on the principle of Denis Leary's character in the film. Leary plays one of the protagonist's patients who is manifested by that character's imagination to be an angry voice of reason during times of distress. It's a fun idea to play with, and Leary is a great casting choice for such a role, but ultimately his character serves as more of a distraction than a compliment to what is otherwise a very real and emotional film. The difference between Funny Games, and The Secret Lives of Dentists is that while Funny Games' gimmick is flat-out contradictory to its ambition, TSLOD's gimmick is but a mere distraction. It works despite Leary, which is probably the only time I'll ever write that phrase in a review.

Most movies that have adulterous partners as characters choose to portray that character as being either a scumbag male character, or a sweet female character who has a scumbag husband and cheats on him with Mr. Right in the name of romantic comedy. That TSLOD dares first of all, to make the female the (potential) adulterer, and second chooses to make neither partner a negative stereotype, is why it works so well. Bypassing cliché allows us to feel anger and bitterness from the scorned devoted husband's perspective, rather than sadness from the female's. While the Denis Leary fabrication doesn't work, what does work is the protagonist's imagining of his wife in the arms of another lover. Throughout the film, he doesn't really know if his wife is cheating on him, he just has “male intuition,” if you will, and Alan Rudolph uses physical manifestations of Campbell Scott's character's imagination to allow the audience to identify and sympathize with him. It is a simple, but effective film technique, for everyone knows how the mind goes crazy when it feels as though it has been wronged.

All being said, this may be far more an involving film for male audiences than female ones. It is told from the head of a male character, and he looks to an imaginary chauvinist (of sorts) for his advice. Since I am of the male gender, however, I cannot accurately comment on the effect/non-effect it may have on the opposite sex. I do know, however, that the picture succeeded in making me feel genuinely upset, and that's something not many pictures have the ability to do.