Irreconcilable Differences opens with young 10-year-old client Casey Brodsky (Drew Barrrymore) being given advice concerning her emancipation from her parents, whom she has deemed unworthy to care for her any longer given their divorce and intense selfishness. But can she convince the judge of this?

Luckily, her parents Lucy (Shelley Long) and Albert (Ryan O'Neal) take the stand and in pleading for her to reconsider, give the courts plenty of reason to grant Casey's wish for freedom. The Brodskys take turns giving their testimony, and the majority of the film is told primarily through flashbacks, the plot unfolding as you might expect. Couple meets cute, get married, have a child, and become Hollywood success stories as a director and a writer, eventually descending into chaotic hate-filled madness near the end. Casey is left to play sad-faced straight man and make her plea for independence.

Let's be honest: You're probably never going to watch this movie, but here are three reasons why you absolutely should.

1. The Brodskys are Totally American
The Brodskys initially espouse some high-minded idealism when they arrive in Hollywood, vowing never to turn into the rich and careless people they meet there. But one thing leads to another as they write a screenplay together, become more and more successful, and in the end, find themselves unable to escape becoming the very people they once loathed. A young and nearly unrecognizable Sharon Stone turns in a picture-perfect performance as Blake Chandler, the other woman who ends the Brodskys' marriage. The Brodskys are utterly rich, selfish, the picture of excess, and become completely unable to care for their young daughter who is sadly neglected and unloved for the majority of the film. Basically, if you're having some sort of horrible divorce film festival, this one should be included.

2. The Plot Moves Pleasantly Slow
For a film made in 1984, the pacing is dolorous and excruciating, and feels much longer than its 113 minutes. Two hours could be wonderful if you ever wanted to sit through someone's home movies about exactly how their marriage fell apart, but most of us fail to reach that benchmark of voyeurism. Luckily there's never a moment when the audience can get left behind, and if anything is unclear, the filmmakers clearly delineate it for us in stark black and white. The father is a whiner! The mother is angry! The daughter is sad! In the end one feels as if one has seen a sort of Revolutionary Road for the Sesame Street set. Only longer, and slower.

3. Atlanta
There is one saving grace to the entire production, and that is the Civil War musical Atlanta, the fictional Waterloo put on by Casey's father, Albert. Albert, as director, has seen fit to dress himself in period garb, and obsesses over the smallest details, from the costume of an extra to the perfect time of day for light. Thousands of extras lay strewn across an open field as slaves dig graves, and then a sudden burst of song from a cocaine-addled Sharon Stone wearing a voluminous Scarlett O'Hara-esque dress: "This Civil War ain't gonna get me down. I'm taking my act to a brand new town. This belle rings in old Atlanta. I'm gonna find myself a brand new Santa!" If this feels a lot like a nonsequitur, I promise you, it is. A moment of silence for one of the finest moments ever committed to film.

Strangely, the film ends as if no one could corporately agree on how to end it, and instead we are left with a strange solution, with no one parent in custody or even sharing custody, and the three members of what used to be the Brodsky family happily eating lunch as the film fades out. Irreconcilable Differences delivers a few heartfelt laughs and is a pleasant rainy afternoon film, but the cartoonish, overwrought selfishness and dramatic insistence of the parents is almost as hard to watch as Drew Barrymore, moping and sulking through life. Fans of the film who remember it from childhood may decide not to re-watch it but instead allow their memories to remain undisturbed.

As far as DVD quality goes, the transfer is poor at best, looking a bit like it was copied directly from a dusty VHS tape. Special features are nonexistent, the DVD offers a meager subtitle track that contains trivia. There is little else to recommend it.

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