Rating: 
Summary: Laura Dern blew me away!
Review: I really liked this film! It was funny, thought-provoking, unflinching, and included a stellar performance by Laura Dern. Makes a very valid point about the controversy of the pro-life/pro-choice issue. The supporting cast was equally good and funny. A surprisingly on-target black comedy.
Rating: 
Summary: This movie shows the rights of Women all over the world.
Review: I think this movie is great. Not only does it show the way people try to deny women of their rights, but it is also a great performance by Laura Dern, who plays a paint-sniffer.
Rating: 
Summary: Marginal Thumb Down
Review: In this Comedy Laura Dern plays a mom who is released on bail from her parents after going to jail for getting high on spray paint. She has four kids who she never see, much less knows who the dad is and is now pregnant again. When her family takes her in she tries to get high on her brothers model cement and is almost arrested. She is taken in by two pro-abortion activists (Swoosie Kurtz and Kelly Preston) and decides to get an abortion. But when the head of "The Baby Savers" comes (Burt Reynolds) she is offered $15,000 to have her baby. But when a man named Wolf, whop lives with the two pro-abortion activists says he will give her 15,00 for not having it, the choice is hers. This Movie gets a few cheap laughs but really lacks it plot and most of all, the acting, with the exception of laura dern's performance. That is not enough to do it, so I have to give this a marginal thumb down. END
Rating:
Summary: Artists Often See Before We Do
Review: It's often said that artists in their vision are in advance of current thinking. Ironic, isn't it, that Payne and Company several years back saw the Citizen Ruth character as a bean-bag for exploitation by self-congratulatory interest groups, well in anticipation of the one we've just created called Elian Gonzalez? This film says something that's frighteningly on target about contemporary "caring" America.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting off-beat indie film
Review: Laura Dern is great in this social satire. The film doesn't take sides and brings up interesting questions. The script is smart and it takes you places you don't expect. Some of the minor characters might benefit from toning down a bit -- it gets a little heavy handed at times -- but still so much better and more original than most independent films. There are some great comic moments as well as poignant ones. A thought-provoking film. DVD also has an interesting commentary by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting off-beat indie film
Review: Laura Dern is great in this social satire. The film doesn't take sides and brings up interesting questions. The script is smart and it takes you places you don't expect. Some of the minor characters might benefit from toning down a bit -- it gets a little heavy handed at times -- but still so much better and more original than most independent films. There are some great comic moments as well as poignant ones. A thought-provoking film. DVD also has an interesting commentary by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor.
Rating:
Summary: A fun film...about choices
Review: Laura Dern plays an unlikely hero Ruth Stoops....a symbol in a war of anti- abortion and pro choice....
Ruth SToops is a drug addict...after sniffing some paint the cops finds ruth again and puts her in jail again. There Ruth Finds out she is knocked up. So she wants to get rid of it but while at an anti- abortion clinic she some how changes her mind for the time being. A nice couple with a mission bails her out. But Ruth tries but goes back to old ways...she than stays with a friend of the couple but the friend turns out to be a spy for pro choice...Ruth's confused....she doesn't know who to believe....she doesn't know who to trust and if they want to take care of her as a friend or they just wanther to send a message for there cause.
This is a funny and hilarious movie....laura dern plays ruth stoops to perfection...at the start you jeer ruth stoops...but by the ending of the movie you will be cheering for ruth stoops...
Rating:
Summary: great film - need more social satire like it
Review: Must have been tough casting this film, given how evenhandedly it blasts the excesses of both sides in this controversy. All the actors and actresses deserve a lot of credit for doing it. Very funny portrayals.
Rating:
Summary: "Get Rid Of It."
Review: One of the most oft-repeated cliches of the pro choice movement is the line "men shouldn't have any say over abortion or a woman's body." Well, director Payne and his co-scenarist Jim Taylor have a LOT to say about abortion, women's bodies and the issues of individuals versus groupthink.I loved this movie! Laura Dern is genuinely funny and quirky as the slow-witted Ruth Stoops, who finds herself at storm center as a judge convicts her of criminal negligence to her unborn fetus. However, out of court, he advises her to "take care of this problem," sotto voce telling her to get an abortion. Ruth doesn't really care; she just wants to find some Krylon or airplane glue to inhale. Finding herself in jail, some Christian pro-lifers take her under their wing. Suddenly, she is no longer a rational actor whose free will determines the birth of her baby, but a pawn in a PR war between pro-life and pro-choice zealots. It is as if Ruth doesn't even exist as an individual, and is only important to these fanatics as a poster child for their respective causes. What I most love about the characterisations of the activists is how Payne shows how removed they are from reality. The pro-lifers (Mary Kay Place and that guy from That 70s Show) are Christian evangelicals who won't even have a TV in their house, hold independent church services at their house and sing horrifyingly bad hymns like "Yes Jesus Loves Me, The Bible Tells Me So" (this hokum is probably the main reason people become atheists; whatever happened to church hymns by Bach or Cesar Franck?) Their clothes are right out of the Monkey Wards 1977 catalogue and they speak in that anti-intellectual sing-song style. The pro-choicers are just as big a scream. Swoosie Kurtz plays a "double agent" who spends months undercover as a tacky Christian hick in order to kidnap one of the women whose pregnancy the pro-lifers intend to bring to term. Once she has Ruth at her house, the wig comes off and she becomes her real self, a somewhat butch lesbian with a bookish feminist lesbian lover. I love the scene when they sing a moon hymn to Gaia. Eventually, this boils over into a national media circus, and we get a couple of campy cameos from Burt Reynolds as President of the Baby Savers and my own Hitchcock goddess, Tippi Hedren as the President of Pro-Choice. Of course, Payne's message is the REAL pro-choice message, that the rights of individuals are what should be protected, not the groupthink of movement activists, whose lives would be empty without having a cause to blindly follow. This movie shows the ultimate disdain and disrespect such groups have for rational, individual choice and common sense. Payne's moral center of the movie is a Vietnam vet and biker who -- though a fervent pro-choicer -- sees through the zealotry of both sides and treats Ruth as an individual, and gives her the "tough love" she needs, instead of patronising her. One of the things I like about this movie is that Payne presents us with _sincere_ activists, who make pretty good points for both sides. And that's where most Americans are; they're not _absolutely_ pro-life nor _absolutely_ pro-choice. But, reaching that point-of-view would take THOUGHT, which most rabid activists are incapable of. I found this VHS (could not find DVD) is only available used, and is currently not in print. How sad! I hope Miramax is planning a new release. I have this movie on LaserDisc, and what a great introduction to Payne's ascerbic wit and keen visual sense that comes to full fruition in "Election."
Rating:
Summary: Alexander Payne's Allegorical Farce
Review: One of the most oft-repeated cliches of the pro choice movement is the line "men shouldn't have any say over abortion or a woman's body." Well, director Payne and his co-scenarist Jim Taylor have a LOT to say about abortion, women's bodies and the issues of individuals versus groupthink. I loved this movie! Laura Dern is genuinely funny and quirky as the slow-witted Ruth Stoops, who finds herself at storm center as a judge convicts her of criminal negligence to her unborn fetus. However, out of court, he advises her to "take care of this problem," sotto voce telling her to get an abortion. Ruth doesn't really care; she just wants to find some Krylon or airplane glue to inhale. Finding herself in jail, some Christian pro-lifers take her under their wing. Suddenly, she is no longer a rational actor whose free will determines the birth of her baby, but a pawn in a PR war between pro-life and pro-choice zealots. It is as if Ruth doesn't even exist as an individual, and is only important to these fanatics as a poster child for their respective causes. What I most love about the characterisations of the activists is how Payne shows how removed they are from reality. The pro-lifers (Mary Kay Place and that guy from That 70s Show) are Christian evangelicals who won't even have a TV in their house, hold independent church services at their house and sing horrifyingly bad hymns like "Yes Jesus Loves Me, The Bible Tells Me So" (this hokum is probably the main reason people become atheists; whatever happened to church hymns by Bach or Cesar Franck?) Their clothes are right out of the Monkey Wards 1977 catalogue and they speak in that anti-intellectual sing-song style. The pro-choicers are just as big a scream. Swoosie Kurtz plays a "double agent" who spends months undercover as a tacky Christian hick in order to kidnap one of the women whose pregnancy the pro-lifers intend to bring to term. Once she has Ruth at her house, the wig comes off and she becomes her real self, a somewhat butch lesbian with a bookish feminist lesbian lover. I love the scene when they sing a moon hymn to Gaia. Eventually, this boils over into a national media circus, and we get a couple of campy cameos from Burt Reynolds as President of the Baby Savers and my own Hitchcock goddess, Tippi Hedren as the President of Pro-Choice. Of course, Payne's message is the REAL pro-choice message, that the rights of individuals are what should be protected, not the groupthink of movement activists, whose lives would be empty without having a cause to blindly follow. This movie shows the ultimate disdain and disrespect such groups have for rational, individual choice and common sense. Payne's moral center of the movie is a Vietnam vet and biker who -- though a fervent pro-choicer -- sees through the zealotry of both sides and treats Ruth as an individual, and gives her the "tough love" she needs, instead of patronising her. One of the things I like about this movie is that Payne presents us with _sincere_ activists, who make pretty good points for both sides. And that's where most Americans are; they're not _absolutely_ pro-life nor _absolutely_ pro-choice. But, reaching that point-of-view would take THOUGHT, which most rabid activists are incapable of. I found this VHS (could not find DVD) is only available used, and is currently not in print. How sad! I hope Miramax is planning a new release. I have this movie on LaserDisc, and what a great introduction to Payne's ascerbic wit and keen visual sense that comes to full fruition in "Election."
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