This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Drama, G, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: James C. Strouse
Starring: John Cusack, Shelan O’Keefe, Gracie Bednarczyk, Alessandro Nivola
Someone answer me this. Is there a shortage of misery in the world? Do things not occur in our own lives often enough to make us sad? Do we really have to entertain ourselves by watching the saddest possible stories? Writer/director James C. Strouse must think not. Otherwise he wouldn’t sit down to write and make a film this bloody sad. The dialog is very natural and the story is too simple, seems full of dead subplots and will probably have you at least sniffling a little by the end (no surprise there, if you have seen the trailer). The performances are magnificently authentic with the young performers shining as brightly as the veteran, Cusack.
John Cusack is Stanley Philipps, whose career army wife is sent to Iraq, while he is left home to care for their daughters. Heidi (Shelan O’Keefe) is 12 and her sister, Dawn (Gracie Bednarczyk) is 8, and caring for them promises to get alot tougher when Stanley receives word that his wife has died in combat. Unable to deal with telling the girls, Stanley instead takes them on an impromptu road trip to an amusement park called Enchanted Garden, while he figures out how to break it to them.
Cusack is great, and he showcases his talent in a role that is very rare for him, here, but the story is too depressing and not interesting enough to offer much more than a dull, empty, heavy feeling by the end. Melodrama lovers might find it suitable for a nice Wednesday night cry, but I’d rather have more jokes, or more story if a movie is going to make me sad in the end.
