I'm almost caught up on watching movies, and will be working on reviewing... I promise! I've been super sick for the last couple of days. It SHOULD have been the perfect movie watching and reviewing time, but while I wasn't at work, I was sleeping. I picked this movie mainly because I like Dakota Fanning as a young actor, and partly because it came up on one of the movie channels and I taped it. I forget to send in my Netflix, so I don't have new movies other than the "watch instantly" online ones. The internet tends to be skiddish, so I don't always trust it.
I remember seeing the trailer for this film and being torn on whether I wanted to see it or not. It was one of those that I was curious about, but didn't want to spend money on. Many of these type of sentimental based-on-best-sellin-novel type movies don't really do it for me, but I'm wiling to give this a shot tonight.
I really like Dakota Fanning as a young actor, and she tends to make good decisions as far as the roles she takes (with the exception of the film Hound Dog, which I hear was HORRID), and so I expected her to be good in this as well. For the most part, she was. I had an eye-roll reaction to all of the "singers-turned-actors" being in the movie. I'm ok with Queen Latifa being in movies because she's done a number of them and has proved herself to be pretty legit following Chicago. Alicia Keys could be good down the road as well, as could Jennifer Hudson (though I STILL think that her Oscar for Dreamgirls was undeserved), but to throw them ALL in the same film was annoying to me. Yet again, it's a movie based on a book, and is probably better as a book.
***SPOILERS START HERE***
So at the beginning of the film, Fanning's character, Lily, accidentally shoots and kills her mom at the age of 4... possible, but not probable. She runs away from her abusive father as a teenager to live with the Boatwright sisters, whom her mother had lived with for a while when she left her husband. The story deals with civil rights, growing up, and finding a place to belong. There's been so many movies lately that take me a while to get into, and this was no exception. Fanning's acting is great, and I like the fact that her character was the one who defied the race lines. The pacing of the movie was a bit off - super slow in some parts, and I lost interest from time to time. Although Lily's father (played by Paul Bettany) wasn't in it much, I always enjoy Bettany as an actor and find him rather underrated. (Sidenote: I recently saw the trailer for Legion... it could be REALLY good, or REALLY crappy! Time will tell!) Lily's quasi-relationship/attraction with Zach (Tristan Wilds) is really sweet as well.
Overall, I REALLY fence-sit on this one. I didn't really care for it, but it wasn't a bad film. If I'm going strictly on my opinion of whether or not the film was enjoyable, I'm more of a no than yes, which I guess would be a thumbs down. I'm glad I didn't pay to see it in the theater, but it wasn't a complete waste of time either.
No comments:
Post a Comment