eddie_baggins While its very much cut from the same cloth as films like The Blind Side and its story reeks of Hollywood sap, you'd be hard pressed to not find enjoyment in this based around real life stories The Good Lie, a film that more than likely bypassed cinemas near you upon release last year and failed to find an audience in any capacity.Produced by the Academy Award winning team of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, The Good Lie certainly has pedigree behind it and with the true story of The Lost Boys Of Sudan as its base, it's hard to know exactly why the film failed so dismally when it was rolled out towards the later end of last year.Reviewed well and rated highly by audiences, one suspects that The Good Lie has the potential to be a slowly building sleeper hit in the years to come and with a tale so easy to like as this, it will be a film that brings both smiles and tears to many different people the world over even though its somewhat twee handling can hamper the films emotional engagement and some scripting scenario/acting turns dampen the films overall quality.The biggest success found within the Good Lie lays entirely on how central group of uprooted refugees led by Arnold Oceng's determined Mamere and Ger Duany's God fearing Jerimiah adapt to life in the land of opportunity in America. There's simple joys to be found in the sincere questioning these kind hearted souls ask and director Philippe Falardeau does a great job of handling his largely unknown cast in the way in which this is portrayed. The top billing of Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon is a little bit of marketing ploy here as a warning as she is largely a bit part player to the Sudanese squad and her role is a little too much "Sandra Bullock" to really work.An enjoyable, often funny and occasionally moving tale with call backs to real life trials over adversity, The Good Lie never becomes anything akin to other classic such tales but it's certainly a film worth tracking down. A quality production that deserved more credit than it ever got upon release, The Good Lie is just the type of Hollywood ilk that we need more of.3 1/2 McDonalds trips out of 5

leonblackwood Review: I really enjoyed this intense drama and you can't help feeling emotional about the brothers emotional story. The many horrible death-defying situations that they found themselves in, did bring a tear to my eye and the fact that it was based on real characters made it even more emotional. Anyway, the film is about 3 brothers and there sister who end up in a refugee camp after walking for miles to escape the enemy during the Sudanese Civil War. After spending years in the camp, they finally get the opportunity to go to Kansas City so while America is excepting refugees so they jump on a plane to freedom. At the airport they find out that the women have to live with a family so they are split up from there sister and they end up living in a small flat together. There counsellor (Reese Witherspoon) struggles to find them jobs because of there lack of qualifications but she has faith in there work methods so she uses all of her resources to get them work. They then battle against the laws of the land to reunite with there sister and they find out that there brother is still alive in Sudan so they try and look for loopholes in the law to bring gin to America.  After seeking help for his brother and failing at every hurdle, one of the brothers takes on the task to go and get him from Sudan but it comes at a high price. Its such a touching story which is put together well by the director. The footage of the families journey to Ethiopia was amazing and authentic and I really can't imagine how difficult that period must have been. The fact that they didn't know anything about modern technology, like phones and simple things like Macdonalds, really did bring there situation to light  and the attention to detail from the director was brilliant. Anyway, I really enjoyed this emotional drama and the acting from the cast was superb. Enjoyable!Round-Up: Although this movie made a massive lose at the box office, which it didn't deserve, I haven't heard a bad word said about it. You might recognise Mamere (Arnold Oceng) from films like Adulthood, Top Boy, Grange Hill and Casualty, so he's quite new to the Hollywood big screen. Jeremiah (Ger Duany) has made appearances in I Heart Huckabees, which I really enjoyed, the Fighter with Mark Wahlberg, Restless City and Isn't It Delicious so he has a little experience, which you can see in his performance. Reese Witherspoon, 39, really came to light after her role in Legally Blonde in 2001 and her performance in Sweet Home Alabama in 2002 but she really hit the big time in 2005 with her Oscar winning performance in Walk The Line. Since then she has made some mediocre movies like Mud, This Means War, Water For Elephants, Devil's Knot and Wild but she hasn't hit the stardom that she reached in 2005. This film was directed by Phillipe Falardeau who is pretty new to the Hollywood big screen, which is why the movie didn't get the big distribution treatment that it deserved. He really did put this emotional, true drama, together well but it's a shame that it didn't reach more cinemas. Its not very often that a film brings a tear to my eye so I have to give this movie the thumbs up.Budget: $20million Worldwide Gross: $3.2millionI recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional dramas about a family who have gone through hell during the Sudanese Civil War and leave there refugee camp to seek for opportunities in America. 7/10

Dragonsouls This was such a great film, I recommend it to anyone who loves true stories. It shows the extremes of humanity, the cruelty and the values. It was sad, but also very inspiring. It was even funny at times, which helped ease the tension a bit. I can't remember the last time I cried while watching a movie. I am so glad that a friend recommended this film to me or I would never had heard of it. Movies like these are so overlooked nowadays because of all the blockbuster films that take up space in the theaters. The Good Lie is a great juxtaposition of of not only humanity's extremes, but also, the 2 different worlds that exist on this single planet. Highly recommended!

srsandsberry A lot of stories based on real-life stories don't feel like real life. They feel like a story reborn within a storyteller's imagination to make it somehow more appealing, a better package. Not "The Good Lie." It feels real. And it engenders real emotion. If you can watch this movie and not laugh and feel warm at the heartwarming parts — as we do in real life — and cry at the heartbreaking moments, then you're not watching. You're texting or having a conversation, or thinking about what you're going to do this weekend. If you give yourself over to this film, it will absolutely pull you inside, wrap itself around you and touch your heart. You will laugh. And yes, you will cry. This story puts a very human face on a very human tragedy, that otherwise we might too often look at simply as a headline on an inside page of the newspaper that we pass over to get to something that isn't so hard to fathom.I applaud the people who made this film and thank them. Any filmmaker on the planet would be proud to have been associated with this. I know I would be, and all I am is a guy who stumbled upon it on HBO. What a find.