Kim Dickens and Bill Pulllman effect one of the best screen romances in a long time. Delicate, sweet, with real adult innocense...the kind of relationship You want to have, but it takes time and it is complicated, like real life. The rest of the story is funny and fun. Stiller is fine with his love/hate relationship...the movie works on repeated viewings. Worth owning on dvd because the director's commentary is excellent.

The best Lean has to offer, and probably one of the best films ever made. Trouble is, it degrades as soon as you bring it home...this film was meant to be seen on the screen. It's nature has no pretense to be 'shot for tv'...there's no 'formatted to fit'...it shall never "fit" the home screen. One scene says it all...Cut to a shot of the desert, and on tv it will seem as though it is all you are looking at, on the big screen there's a difference---there's movement on the edge of the horizon which cannot be seen on the tv screen. The acting is stellar, the locations incredible, the story magnificent...and will all of THAT transfer to the home medium, yes, however small. The film edifies the human spirit...which is what we ask of all great film. See it...even IF it's on a dvd-watchman, sooner or later you'll find a way to see it as it was meant ('it is written').

The hollywood trend continues...that is to say the pandering of film to lower the tastes of film going audiences. This masturbatory mis-adventure about guys who continually objectify women seeks to say that a male adolescent's brain is located too far south of his cranium. The disturbing aspect of it all is that the film was so popular among teens that it seems like a whole-sale endorsement for ignorance. Do you get the fact that what we watch determines little by little who we are? As Hollis Little Creek says, "Be careful what you advertise on your t-shirts, people might just think that's who you are..."

Weird to think that Scorcese directed this. It's astride his understandings but the direction is totally On. Alfred Lutter is amazing as Burstyn's son, Jodie Foster plays a juvenile delinquent with flair, "is it a ripple day?" This film was made decades ahead of 'Tumbleweeds' and 'Anywhere But Here' but plays through many of the same themes and issues...(albeit more from the parent's view than from the child's). Eccentric characters, real slice-of-pie diner life, there's tons of truth to go around.