Rating: 
Summary: The Worst
Review: This had to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. I love Sandra Bullock but the plot of this movie is terrible. If you can relate to this movie, I feel sorry for you. None of Mother's reasons justified her actions. I was disgusted with the her. Don't even waste your money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Packs an Emotional Punch!
Review: What a great film! Excellently directed and superbly produced, DSYYS takes the viewer through the turbulent relationship between mother and daughter and the friends who try to keep them together. Through flashbacks, we see what made this relationship so temultuous but also see how the relationship blossomed in less troubled days.This film is not a chick flick. This film is about relationships. It's about the relationship between parent and child. We all have them. Whether we have good relationships with our parents/children or not, this film will bring a healing to the soul that nothing else can. Yes, there is a moral to this film. There is a resolution. You should take this film and work it into your own life and examine your own relationships. Learn what you can about the past of your loved ones. Try to understand why they are the way they are. This truly inspires viewers to look introspectively. Surface-wise, the film is a great adaptation of the book. Although not all parts of the book are covered, the writers and director did a wonderful job of combining both Rebecca Wells' novels into one script and the augmentations in the story actually worked and retained the integrity of the story. The producers of the film excellently hired the director, writers and rest of the crew and fabulously cast the actors in their roles. The characters truly came alive on screen in the movie. I highly recommend this film to everyone for the powerful impact it will leave on you after seeing it.
Rating: 
Summary: Wise, Witty, and Wonderful!
Review: After all the hype and comparisons to 'Steel Magnolias', 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood', sadly, did not do much box office, which was a shame, as it is a more intimate, realistic vision of women and life-long friendships than the glossier 'Magnolias'. Four girl friends in Louisiana create a secret sisterhood in 1937, swearing eternal devotion to each other, and they remain best friends through all the triumphs and tragedies in their lives. When the daughter of one of them (Sandra Bullock), a successful playright, has an interview with Time magazine in which she blasts her mother's impact on her life, the mother (Ellen Burstyn, who is superb!) goes ballistic, cutting the daughter out of her life, totally. Into this maelstrom charges the other members of the Sisterhood, kidnapping Bullock, and attempting to make things right! The film then jumps back and forth in time, with Ashley Judd (who gives an Oscar-worthy performance) playing the younger Burstyn. She has a lot of happy adventures with her Ya-Ya sisters, but also has to deal with racism, a jealous religious zealot of a mother, an overly loving father (David Rasche, breaking free of his usual comic roles), a true love who dies in WWII, and a family with a guy she 'settles' for (played, in present day, by the wonderful James Garner). There is also a dark secret that is the core of the mother/daughter alienation, which must be dealt with in order for the rift between Bullock and Burstyn to heal (No, I will NOT give it away!) If you do the math about the years covered, you realize the present-day story SHOULD be taking place in the early nineties, at the latest, but this doesn't hurt the overall effectiveness of the picture. As the other present-day sisters, Fionnula Flanagan, Shirley Knight, and (especially) Maggie Smith are WONDERFUL, as is Angus MacFadyen, as Bullock's sympathetic and likable fiance. While this is unabashedly a 'chick flick', something I really liked was that they DIDN'T fall back on that old chestnut of somebody dying to serve as a convenient catalyst for change and the healing process. And the dialog is full of wickedly hilarious one-liners about men, alcohol, friendship, and growing old! Don't miss this gem!
Rating:
Summary: I Started Saying Ya-Ya!
Review: One day this past summer, my 3 sisters and I went off to the theatre with our mother to see the "Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood." Having a Louisiana heritage ourselves, we were excited to see how this movie would portray life on the bayou. As it turned out, it was done beautifully! You fall in love with the charm of the close knit Ya-Ya's, and you find yourself wishing for a group of girlfriends just as close as Vivi and her friends. The journey from Vivi, Teensy, Necie, and Caro's childhood is amazing, full of drama, romance, shotglasses and martini's, and a ton of humor! At the end of the movie, I told my sister Katie that I would be buying the DVD as soon as it came out, and I plan to still! This is a hysterical movie that takes you through all stages of life, and it is perfect to watch with your sister, your mother, or your best friend. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Delightfully entertaining.
Review: My daughter took me to see this movie with a friend of hers, we all loved it. I took my sister the next week and enjoyed it even more. There is so much complexity that is easy to miss with the first viewing. If you want to laugh, cry and be thoroughly entertained, this is a MUST see. You could say it is a female movie, but my brother-in-law loved it too.
Rating: 
Summary: The story might be OK without the ulterior motives
Review: If a copy of this movie were placed in a time capsule to be opened in some distsnt (and hopefully more enlightened) age, it could make people really wonder. Here's a movie in which, for its time, the male characters are notoriously long-suffering and inoffensive. But why does it have to end with a heavy-handed new-agish "sisterhood" ritual in which the participants declare that no man will put them down? In the world of this movie at least, there's absolute no danger of men putting women down; if anything quite the reverse. The movie's villain (given a chance to redeeem herself and obligatorily does, but still very much a villain through too much of the story), is played in part of her lifetime by Ashley Judd, no stranger to potentially meancing roles, and herein by no means escaping her tendency to be so typecast. It must be said that she does show some talent herein, but the only utterly new ground is that this notorious self-proclaimed "ball-buster" plays a mom who abuses her children of both "genders" - seeing her forced to play a more equal opportunity gonad buster IS really something new. But she still gets off quitting playing the character before the long-suffering story allows that character's reform to be complete. In that I as an audience member almost felt cheated. What I say is in no way meant to detract from Ellen Burstyn's performance as the older version of that character, but in all fairness, I think they should really have had Ashley Judd fininsh out the role, making her up to look older for that part of the performance. Then this actress might undergo a real emergence, from her typecast state, playing a character that can grow and reform. That alone would be fascinating to watch. At any rate the character played by Judd and Burstyn could be a potentially interesting case study in alcoholism and its devastating consequences. But the movie's insistence on framing itself in all the title "sisterhood" motif that asserts itself with force in the tacked-on ending reveals that that isn't what the making of this film is all about. After all one can't forget that the director and screen-writer is one thrust to fame by winning probably the all-time most ill-gotten Oscar for the quintessential ball-busting movie of all time. Yes, there's an ulterior motive here to manipulate. And for me, what could be a rather innoccuous and somewhat interesting story is hard to swallow, framed in that attempted manipulation, even if the attempt doesn't work with me.
Rating:
Summary: Astounding Menagerie in a Spectacular film.
Review: I cried. If you are looking for a movie with a phenomenal cast but minus the fantasy story-lines that we are being bombarded with then this is certainly a top pic. Who am I kidding, if you simple want an EXCELLENT movie, a keeper, then you've picked the right one here. An astounding cast was put together for this feat, and that's exactly what it was. Bullock, Maggie Smith, Garner ... oh, it would take me too long to extoll all of the virtues of this film, not including the cast, production and story... What would you give to truly understand your mother and, in turn, yourself? I don't know if the turmoil would be worth it for many. But every story, no matter how well examined, is still colored by perspective. And a child's perspective is exactly that. Understanding and acceptance are sometimes the most difficult goals to achieve but often they are the most rewrading.
Rating:
Summary: loved the book
Review: i really enjoyed the book which was given to me to read while holidaying through europe. i never finished the book till i returned to sydney about four years later. when i finally found it i bought it and finished reading it. and i thought, except for the ending which i found a little weak, fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: One of The Best Movies I have Ever Seen
Review: This movie was one of the best movies I have seen in a long long time. It has humor, sadness, and a story and could be labeled a gal flick but I think men will find it good as well. The story unfolds using the characters all the way through and all their quirks. Very good - I can't wait for it to release so I can buy it and watch it again.
Rating:
Summary: one of my all time faves
Review: this was a great chick flick. right up there with a walk to remember. well lets start by saying i saw this on its opening day and it is a movie for everyone. Sidda is a frustrated daughter of a alcoholic overly abusive mother. her mothers friends the yayas go to bring sidda back no matter what it takes. it is worth watching. go see now. ya ya rules.
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