thumbpikr I'm a fan of small movies with great characters and this one is just that. It's a slice of life featuring a single father, Ray Weiler, and his two young daughters. Ray is someone we've all known in our own lives, good intentions but often irresponsible.This is one of Harvey Keitel's finest performances and he's matched with two excellent young actresses. Fairuza Balk who plays the eldest daughter, is particularly impressive. Keitel is far more nuanced than one might expect from his more familiar action roles and by the end of the film, I couldn't imagine anyone else playing Ray Weiler. He's sympathetic but wrapped in a bit of sadness.Yes, the pace is sometimes a bit slow but it all unfolds nicely and the characters are so well drawn that the plot is almost secondary. The script has an autobiographical feel and that may account for its authenticity.Despite his faults, Ray Weiler is someone I glad I got to know.

wild_viking To anyone who has ever had a disappointing father yet still was able to get past his shortcomings and love him this is your movie. The power to love is what this movie is about. It is not a cliché type movie though. The power of love does not include forgiveness nor going into agreement with or going along with the person. It is the ability to love what goodness there is available in a person despite all the reasons (their bad characteristics) one should not. This movie is a tear jerker but I found it very uplifting as well. Keitel, D'Onofrio and especially Fairuza Balk are all fantastic. The direction and writing are perfect. It is a rare movie. Because I wouldn't change one bit of it. I'd rate it in my top 25 of all time. It's that good.

Robin Cunningham Spell Draggy with a capital D. Keitel, as strong as he is, couldn't salvage this disaster, neither could pretty Fairuza Balk. A trite unimaginative story of a loser conman father (Keitel) as he blunders his way through life providing little fathering for his two daughters. Boring, predictable, draggy (oh, that was twice? it deserves it!) News of his ultimate death puts him out of his misery - it's a shame we couldn't have enjoyed the same fate about a hundred minutes earlier. An insult to Willie Loman and Death of a Salesman which this obviously borrowed heavily from. Skip renting it - and if it on TV and you only have one channel, watch the commercials, they have a much higher entertainment value. 2/10

Dennis Littrell This is a great movie. I'm amazed that it got made and done so well. First kudos go to Sheila Ballantyne who wrote the novel. A story like this cannot be made up in committee or by hiring the hottest screen writer in town. It has to be lived. There's no question that Ballantyne lived it. And then it has to be understood in the light of love before it can be shared with us. And she did that.Second kudos go to Tony Drazan who directed and interpreted. It can be seen that he loved the story and he wanted it to be beautiful, and he made it so.He picked the dearest, sweetest girls to play the parts of Sonya and Greta at various ages. And he had to have the right man for their father, a flawed man, like all of us, a man doing the best he can, a man with values that don't really work, a man who lost his young wife to cancer and was left to raise his two daughters alone, a man like Arthur Miller's Willie Loman who had big dreams never realized, a man neither hero not villain; in short a man who had to be played with delicacy and without maudlin sentiment. Harvey Keitel fit the part, that of a schemer and a dreamer and a self-deluded hustling con man, and did a fantastic, flawless job.Fairuza Balk, who played Sonya was wonderful, and Elizabeth Moss as Greta was adorable beyond expression, and so beautifully directed. The girl who played the young Sonya was not only excellent, but looked enough like Fairuza Balk to be her younger sister: perfect casting. And Kelly Lynch who had a limited role as the mother was exquisite. The interaction between the father and the daughters was painfully veracious, filled with real- life tension and heart-breaking disappointments, but done without abuse and without any of the dysfunctional family sicknesses so often expressed these days. We see his failure as a father on one level, and yet in the end we see through the eyes and the voice of Sonya a greater truth: in spite of his weaknesses he actually succeeded as a father. In fact we see that whether he knew it or not, the one thing that he did right in his life, although he wavered plenty, was bringing up his girls against the great odds of his defective character. And the love shown him by his daughters, so beautifully projected by both Balk and Moss, was wonderful to experience since it is so seldom seen these days when the usual style is to trash men and their part in the family. And the nonexploitive, nurturing and loving role of Sonya's English teacher, played with a fine delicacy by Vincent D'Onfrio, was a much-needed change from the usual cinematic use of teachers as sexual lechers. In this movie we can see that men are people too. (Hello!)I should mention that the screenplay by Kristine Johnson and Davia Nelson was carefully crafted to showcase the story dramatically, and to warn you that this is a tear jerker. It starts a little slow, and seems a touch old fashioned, but stay with it: it's a beautiful movie, one the best I've ever seen.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)