I feared that this would be a "chick flick." It was. However, it was a "chick flick" in both senses of the term.
In the pejorative sense of "chick flick," this movie is like a CD-changer with four CDs -- wacky, weepy. sappy, and sweet. Moreover, the changer has not even been put on random play, so the order of play among the CDs is predictable when it is not formulaic. Even fans of soap operas should grow tired of diseases and desertions, deaths and dopes.
On the other hand, Natalie Portman realized her character well and her speech to Ashley Judd was superior to any formal philosophy I have read or heard. Many elements of the picture amplify or exemplify the lesson that Portman there enunciates, so the film achieves coherence around the means that women use to get around the preponderance of lowlife males in the world. That is the good side of a chick flick.
I'd have cut out everything about Willie Jack after he leaves K-Mart. He is largely a digression. That would lose the film Joan Cusack's wonderful character but would shorten the film and keep it focused.
I was pleased by Sally Field's cameo but angered by the credulity of the central character with respect to "Momma Lil." I found it hard to sympathize with Novalee, so stupid was her trusting her mother. If the movie is about goodness, could we see goodness unalloyed by stupidity, naivete, or recklessness?
I enjoyed the characters, was intrigued by the beginning, was not annoyed by the predictable ending, and wish that much of the middle had been streamlined.
In the pejorative sense of "chick flick," this movie is like a CD-changer with four CDs -- wacky, weepy. sappy, and sweet. Moreover, the changer has not even been put on random play, so the order of play among the CDs is predictable when it is not formulaic. Even fans of soap operas should grow tired of diseases and desertions, deaths and dopes.
On the other hand, Natalie Portman realized her character well and her speech to Ashley Judd was superior to any formal philosophy I have read or heard. Many elements of the picture amplify or exemplify the lesson that Portman there enunciates, so the film achieves coherence around the means that women use to get around the preponderance of lowlife males in the world. That is the good side of a chick flick.
I'd have cut out everything about Willie Jack after he leaves K-Mart. He is largely a digression. That would lose the film Joan Cusack's wonderful character but would shorten the film and keep it focused.
I was pleased by Sally Field's cameo but angered by the credulity of the central character with respect to "Momma Lil." I found it hard to sympathize with Novalee, so stupid was her trusting her mother. If the movie is about goodness, could we see goodness unalloyed by stupidity, naivete, or recklessness?
I enjoyed the characters, was intrigued by the beginning, was not annoyed by the predictable ending, and wish that much of the middle had been streamlined.