Adopt a Sailor

I wish i hadn't watched it ... i'm sure i could have found a hundred other bad films instead ... toss this one to the trash please

A real young man meets the affectations of a New York couple. Ethan Peck is great in his portrayal of the polite small town boy raised to respect others and show propriety. Bebe Neuwirth was surprisingly believable and Peter Coyote was not ashamed to play an embarrassing character. Well done

Charles Evered first wrote the play on which this film is based and then turned that play into a movie, directing it with all the sensitive promise of the script. It is a pleasure to experience this little low budget Indie and be swept up in the honest manner in which it invites us to look at our lives from a different perspective.

It is Fleet Week in New York, a time when sailors about to be shipped out to duty are given an evening of freedom with the option of accepting the invitation of families to invite them into their homes as a farewell. A young HM3 (navy corpsman) from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas played with poetic sensitivity by Ethan Peck (grandson of Gregory Peck) is serendipitously 'adopted' by a dysfunctional New York couple - Patricia (Bebe Neuwirth) runs a gallery and husband Richard (Peter Coyote) makes films. As Patricia responds to the sailor's wonder, 'Movies are what people what to go see, films are what you try to convince people to see' - evidence that Patricia has been supporting the marriage so that Richard doesn't have to work except to make unwanted films: the couple is nearing dissolution. Through one evening of conversation Patricia and Richard voice their failing love, the sailor maintains an innocence about life in the big city and in doing so shares some of his own small town fears and frustrations about becoming an adult- and the three people find a new look on their lives as a result. The film is at once hilarious, verbally brutal, revealing, and genuinely tender as these three people's lives intersect to find new and healthy direction.

Ethan Peck is absolutely extraordinary in maintaining his innocent near-angel role, never becoming mawkish or a parody of 'Southern uneducated kids'. He is a joy throughout the film and demonstrates that he is an actor of great promise. Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Coyote are both solid and polished actors and make us examine their decadent marriage without allowing the viewer to take sides but instead to ache for both of them. The film is a jewel and speaks especially loudly about the young lads who are being sent off to war. Charles Evered is a major talent to watch. Highly Recommended.

Grady Harp

I was channel checking and, having served in the U.S. Navy for 20+ years, wanted to see what it was about. Short and to the point: No FILTHY language, which some person or persons, wish I knew who, somewhere decided that having extreme profanity is ADULT language. It was so refreshing, the language, no nudity,no blood spilling, no sex scenes. A movie you would gladly watch with your kids or grandkids. The sequence regarding the fall from 5000 feet is an absolute treasure. The sailors age would have been, probably, in the 21 to 23 age range. Given the fact that he'd obviously been out of Turkey Track for quite some time, probably seen and heard a lot of things he'd never seen or heard of in Turkey Track, somehow managed to maintain a high degree of innocence, discipline and respect.

Fairly good performances by the three stars are sabotaged by a plodding and pretentious screenplay. Reviewers on other sites who see parallels with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? aren't entirely wrong, but they miss the fact that Edward Albee is a genius and Charles Evered is not. This is a dumbed-down, lightened-up, sped-up, Lifetime-movie version of Woolf, filled with clichés and dialog so trite that it makes even talented actors (which these three are) seem like hams.

Patricia (Neuwirth) comes closest to being a believable character; unlike the two men, she has more than one side: a sarcastic harridan who despises her ineffectual husband (like Martha in Woolf) and a sympathetic, even motherly woman who is aware of her own failings. Unfortunately, Neuwirth isn't well cast for either of those roles: she does sarcastic cold-hearted b!tch better than just about anybody, but when it comes to snarling and spitting like an enraged tigress (Liz Taylor's Martha), it's just acting with Neuwirth, and not very good acting.

Richard (Coyote) and Sailor (Peck) are so shallow and one-dimensional that it's surprising when they turn and you see they're not cardboard cutouts. Coyote's whining, thumb-sucking, new-age twit in this stupid movie is almost unbearable. Peck is a too-good-to-be-true angel unawares, a heavenly creature who drifts down off a cloud in his blinding-white sailor duds and his aw-shucks-y'all sincerity and sets Pat and Rich's world a-spinning. He's so perfect I kept wishing somebody would knock his teeth out, or that he'd turn out to have flaws like human beings have, but he never did.

Another reviewer said, "Adopt a Sailor seems sugary and contrived initially." I say it never becomes anything else, and by the end the sugar is SO thick there should be an automatic link to Woolf, or at least a clip - Liz with her hands on her hips braying her rage at the moon - to help viewers clear out the sour taste this shallow, saccharine, contrived, phony movie leaves.