Finding Home

The photography is beautiful. The actors are attractive and their characters have moments of interest. I enjoyed the first half hour or so of a slowly unfolding story of family conflict, nostalgia for an interrupted youth. Frequent flashbacks enlivened the development of the backstory.

However, the slow unfolding became a plodding march from incident to incident more akin to the animation of a bulleted list than the representation of a maturing person.

The acting and cinematography talent are wasted on an overly long, contrived, unbelievable and trite plot. The writing is wooden to the point of embarrassment. My wife summed it up: This is the movie equivalent of a Good Housekeeping novel, in the worst sense.

Would give a 9, but I'm giving a 10 to try to counteract some of the overly low ratings (in spite of the 14 awards!).

Definitely recommend for girls, not only because of type of story, but also as this gives a good example of what kind of guy to avoid.

Recommend for anyone because of Genevieve Bujold, and of course the location filming, done apparently at great difficulty.

I really enjoyed the musical score, which is one of the most beautiful I have heard in a long time.

Again, this great effort won many awards, and so an overly low rating is childish, and can really be ignored. I would definitely suggest seeing this fine independent film.

How did this movie win an award and receive a four star rating? Was it four stars out of ten or what? It was so BAD, so unbelievably soap-opera predictable, that it had me mesmerized.

I found myself waiting desperately for the dog to return, since his acting outshone that of any of the human actors. The main character was ridiculous, her friend was so ill defined as to be non existent and her love interests were A) clichéd and B) wooden.

And what is with Genevieve Bujold? I could say that perhaps she has fallen on hard times, but her acting was as weak as the rest. I've been to high school plays with more believable characters than these.

How do movies like this get funding?

Four male writers couldn't hang any of this film together in spite of some great old stars (Louise Fletcher, Genevieve Bujold) who try their best with a leaden script and subversive fundamentalist messages.

Clichés? Let me count the ways. I believe I've never been privy to so many in this one loooooong contrived movie that must have gone straight to DVD. It wouldn't survive a Friday night at the local Odeon.

Traumatic event in childhood conveniently forgotten by the star - who by the way has to be one of the most irritating actresses ever, she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B to quote a famous critic. She squeaks her lines and does a lot of batting with the eyes. Awful to watch her.

The granddaughter is forbidden to see the grandmother as an eleven year old child but then makes no effort to see her as an adult even though she professes undying love for her? She behaves like a receptionist in her "high career" in New York, excited over her birthday and her new boyfriend, her "boss". The audience is not privy to what everyone does for a living. It is strictly so she can give up her career (in that "fundy" way) to settle down and get over that nonsense.

The caretaker-sculptor turns out to have invested in Microsoft when he was twelve (doesn't everybody?) and is now wealthy but living as a boatman/bum.

The secret was not getting worked up into a froth over. Fisticuffs a plenty and the oddest, strained dialogue. Squeaky clean too. She accuses her boss of travelling all the way to Maine so he could "jump her". Man that spun me sideways before I burst out laughing. "Jump"? Wha'? I've never heard a woman use that term. Guys, yes.

And it goes on and on and on and on and on. Each cliché heavier than the one before it until it collapses, whimpering, under the pro-life ending.

I gave it 2 out of 10. The scenery and the inn are truly lovely and so is the haunting music.

Being from Maine, I sure wanted to love this movie..but I didn't! The plot was contrived and in several ways, quite silly. The first half of the film dragged mercilessly, while at the same time facets of the plot were not fully developed, making the story line weak and non-sensical and the characters shallow. It makes no sense that this young woman who so loved and missed her grandmother would not have returned to see her as soon as she was old enough to be independent from her controlling mother, especially with the level of animosity she felt toward her mother. The film touts Amanda as being "an ambitious young executive" who has a "busy career," yet all we see of her at her job gives the impression that she is nothing but a receptionist with nothing on her mind but her birthday and her boyfriend. The false memory idea fails miserably, its "moment of revelation" totally lacking in energy and focus.

What should have been a good plot, fertile ground for a poignant and meaningful film, was sadly wasted. What a disappointment!