charles-lipton Hi...I watched the movie for the first time many years ago.not many people have seen it...its wonderful.the end when he knows what to do with her ashes and the build up...drive and music makes me cry and its just so heartfelt good....Film,acting,music and how it makes you feel...Mark Harmon is fantastic as the burnt out baseball player who because of Jodie foster's characters death gets a second chance in life.A life he has wasted after all the good chances he had when he was younger.Many movies make you feel things but this movie if you watch carefully really does make you realise you can succeed and have a second chance....Someone else in real life might make you think twice about whats going on..anyway to some up..the acting is great and the list of actors super..

trpdean This is a fictional character study, nostalgia piece, and inspirational story. The reason it works is not so much the novelty of the plot or situations, but the actors and the physical settings.Rarely has a film been cast so very well.Mark Harmon, fine actor and former star USC quarterback plays a baseball player.One of America's very best actresses, Jodie Foster plays his older friend.Another of the top American actresses, Blair Brown plays his mother (when he was small).The very appealing John A. Shea (think of his portrayal of Robert F. Kennedy or his co-star part on the Spuerman series) is his father.The really lovely, Southern seductress Beth Broderick (former co-star of Sabrina and so often well-cast as the beauty on series such as From the earth to the Moon) is perfectly cast - as is Jonathan Silverman in a Summer of '42 part.Harmon and Foster are opposites in so many ways - in life as well as their characters - yet they're both so unselfish, so singular as personalities - Mark Hamill was born to play the taciturn disciplinarian General Black Jack Pershing leader of America's military in our first World War, and Jodie Foster was born to play a very pretty poetry editor of a literary quarterly in the Village in the 1950s - and I don't think they share a scene together here (he plays the boy as a 38 year old - and we don't see her after she's in her mid-20s) yet we feel them together throughout the film - they dominate the film.Such is the appeal of Harmon that we can see his character wholly irresponsible and really wanting to dump the business of his boyhood mentor's urn of ashes upon his mother - and yet like him very much.Such is the appeal of Foster that we can hear her utter every silly clichéd sentiment of a girl of that age and that time - and yet think she's really worth caring for - we can fall in love with this young woman whom we might really think an idiot in real life.But Foster is so obviosly NOT an idiot, that she lends intelligence to a cliché - and Harmon is so obviously a responsible sober responsible man that he lends this to his often drunken, prostitute-visiting character.They lift this movie to something special and really worth watching.I'd love to see Harmon and Foster share the same movie again. They're so different, both highly appealing, both very distinctive.You'll like this movie.

liamforeman I first watched this in the theater when I was 15, and I was bored by it. Then one night it was on cable and I decided to rewatch it. My heart is aching, because twenty years has made such a difference in how I see this movie. This movie is about loss. Lost dreams, lost loves, lost potential, lost chances of making amends. Jodie Foster was heartbreaking. A girl from a well to do family who could just never get her life together. A woman/child who in some ways was mature beyond her years but also immature for her years. Foster nails this performance, and in fact I think this is her most touching performance. In the flashback at the end where she is on the pier aching for a dream escape from her life, you can feel her want and quiet desperation. "See that's all I really want to do, Billy Boy. I want to leap off this pier and fly high in the air and hang out with the wind and drift with the clouds. And at night with the moon full and the sea wild, I'd meet my lover high on a cliff and we'd swoop down into the ocean and swim all the way down and touch the bottom... up through the dark water and break the surface! And then we'd fly to Jamaica for pina coladas. God I wish I could do that." William McNamara in one of his best roles. He played this with innocence and sensitivity, and was appealing. The downsides: Mark Harmon does his best, but I felt that at times his performance brought the film down. When he raced to fling her ashes over the pier, I wanted to be more touched but he just didn't do it for me. The scenes with Appleby were OK when they were younger, but Harold Ramis was wasted in this film. I am from East Falls, Philadelphia, so I appreciated the trip down memory lane with the Philly and south Jersey scenes. I'd recommend watching this. Today I purchased the DVD and will probably rewatch it soon.

yemaj6 I remember seeing this film back in 1988, when it was released. I watch the movie today and still enjoy it as much as the very first time that I saw it. It's a perfect blend of drama, passion, action, excitement, and comedy, as well as a great soundtrack. Not many movies today have that wide range of variety within them. When I watch this movie, it really makes me feel like I am there with the characters. Call me a "square", but I feel strongly about this film. It is a shame that not very many people that I know have seen the movie. This movie I would classify as a "diamond in the rough". Hopefully, this review may entice people to at least check the film out. Enjoy.