Rating: 3.5/5 -- The best things about Firstborn are the easy, natural performances of the actors.

Rating: 2/4 -- The movie creates such an urgent situation, and fills it with such interesting characters, that when everything goes wrong at the end I felt more than disappointed, I felt cheated. Full Review

Director Michael Apted ("Coal Miner's Daughter") settles for a movie of pat moralism, a pamphleteer's parable of how drugs destroy families. Full Review

Firstborn is the film we knew Apted had in him when we saw the care and craftsmanship in his Coal Miner's Daughter and Continental Divide. It's a find, and Collet's singular performance is its core. Full Review

Rating: 2.5/4 -- This flawed but interesting Freudian melodrama spends about 70 minutes making points and the last 30 minutes losing them. Full Review

It might have worked if Apted were as adept at creating an emotional atmosphere as he is in his portraiture of the suburban milieu, but too many unshaped scenes and redundant dialogue passages take their toll. Full Review

Rating: C- -- A heavy-handed suburban sitcom. Full Review