|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Product Details
|
Product Description
Amazon.com Essential Video
Based on Anna Quindlen's bestselling novel, this is a mother-daughter and father-daughter story, two for the price of one. But director Carl Franklin also tries to inject a police-mystery angle that it neither needs nor will support. Renee Zellweger plays a young writer on the rise, who has finally gotten her break for a New York magazine. While home for a birthday party for her nearly famous writer father (William Hurt), she learns that her mother (Meryl Streep) has been diagnosed with cancer. Then her father does the unthinkable: He all but commands her to put her career on hold to take care of her mother and nurse her through her illness. Dad, a popular college professor who has never gotten the literary acclaim he always believed he deserved, essentially checks out--and daughter must play parent to her mother. Strong performances by Streep and Zellweger give this parent-child relationship the heart--and the anger--of the real thing, while Hurt seems slightly disembodied as the self-involved father whose needs have dominated both women. Still, the detective-story aspect (the film is told in flashback, as the cops try to discover whether someone slipped Mom a fatal dose of morphine) is a construct that could have been done without. --Marshall Fine
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
One True Thing,
By
This review is from: One True Thing (Widescreen) (DVD)
Excellent Movie!Excellent Service by the 3rd Party Reseller! --- Thank You! --- --- R. Nason
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE EXTRAORDINARY SOUL OF A REGULAR "HOUSE WIFE",
By
This review is from: One True Thing (Widescreen) (DVD)
If there's one actress that can get into the skin of her character, Streep is it. She effortlessly portays a regular housewife, embroidering pillows and decorating cribs one minute, and being a veritable fountain of love and understanding the next! William Hurt turns in a convincing performance too, as the aloof and careless Regular Husband, while Zellweger adds a mean punch with her rich and dynamic presence. The theme is hardly anything earth-shattering, but there's a fine line between the genuinely moving and the saccharine, and under Franklin's low-key direction "One True Thing" succeeds where many pictures fail by maintaining its dignity and, just as importantly, its honesty. You won't cry out of a sense of obligation, but because the incredible cast drive the material straight to the heart. Highly recommended if you're in the mood for a stirring "Ordinary People" type of a drama. Keep a Kleenex handy.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Please read the book,
By A Customer
This review is from: One True Thing (VHS Tape)
Although the acting is very fine, this movie does an injustice to the book. The book is the story of Ellen's developing awareness, and is told very subtly. Before her mother's illness, Ellen had been seeing the world through her father's eyes. In the process of bonding with her mother, she develops a much deeper view of herself, her parents, their life as a family, and of how she intends to live. The movie comes close to reducing this complex story to a morality tale espousing the beauty of traditional feminine virtues, and makes what should be a subtle story a nearly black and white one. The problem is not that the movie differs from the book; it's that the movie fundamentally distorts the book's meaning.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
