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Stepmom

List Price: $14.95
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great movie - made me cry.
Review: I love this movie. It made me cry, and was very much like Beaches (in some way) If you loved Beaches the movie, you'll love this.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Give me a break!
Review: I hated this movie. I lived the "stepmom" role. I currently the "ex" and my son has to deal with his "stepmom". Let's start with the fact that Susan Saradon's character is so far from unreal it is not funny. She dotes on her kids to a fault, keeps up the 3 story Victorian house all by herself, is smart and funny. So I guess the only reason her husband didn't want her anymore is because she grew older. But at least they still can be friends. Hell, he even went out and bought a lid of grass for her to help with the cancer treatment. I hate the depiction of father is suppose to be spending time with the kids and they are being taken care of by the fiance'. Dad has to go to work, well doesn't she? She loses her job over his kids crisis? The mom doesn't have any friends or relatives that the kids can go to while she is in treatment? No, she has to go to the woman who lost her son while she was working on a photo shoot. Too silly for words. Pass on this movie...unless you are looking for the fantasy of how to deal with a family that is not yours. Also see the Brady Bunch....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A cute, but sad movie
Review: I saw this movie one weekend recently, and at first, I thought it was a bit boring. Then, I just relaxed and I was amazed by the acting chemistry between all of the characters. The story was a bit typical for any movie like this. The kids did a really good job. They acted as though they've been in the business since before they were born. Definitely a great movie, but make sure you have plenty of tissues, because you will cry!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Are you looking for a video to watch this week-end?
Review: If your looking for a video to watch this week-end here's a good one, Step-mom. It has a little cursing in it but not that bad.It's about a little girl, her mom and dad get a divoce and her dad gets remarried. This is a great movie because it tells about her mom having cancer.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Touching and well written
Review: This is one of my favorite movies. You get so caught up in the story and feel like you know the characters. The story is about a family that is split in two because of divorce. Susan Sarandon plays the mom of Anna and Ben. Julia Roberts plays the new girlfriend of Susan's ex-husband. Isabelle (julia) and Susan's character are constantly at battle. A new problem will test the familie's strength. The movie is sad. I always cry, but it's all worth it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Great Human Drama Turned into Garbage.
Review: This is a movie about unfulfilled hopes of love, desperation of middle age, loneliness of dying, and destroyed childhoods. It's also a movie about responsibility and lack of such. What a potential for a real drama. But no, they had to make everybody so sweet, so wonderful that I had to go eat an anchovy.
So start with the father:

An aging affluent lawer brings home to live with him and his two young children a girl almost half his age. She is neither a wife nor is there any talk about marriage at that time. The children are confused about her role in their father's life. The little boy asks his father why his dad and mom got divorced. Dad's answer is remarkable: "because daddy doesn't love mommy any longer". Then he changes it to a "better" answer: "daddy loves mommy, but not that way". How caring!

Dad is really great. He loves his girlfriend "that way". Passions are so great that the two lovers forget to close the door while they love each other "that way". Unfortunately (or fortunately) we were not privileged to see Ed Harris making love to Julia Roberts in the bathroom but his daughter was. But it's ok. the mother doesn't mind. To take the children from their irresponsible father would be too damaging. Really....

There is no sex in this movie because of its rating, but the ideas are much more damaging for the young mind.

At this point the makers of the movie decided that it was not fair to blame everything on poor Ed Harris. So they create a scene where the mother accuses the dad of leaving her, his response is interesting: " You were the one who threw me out of this house two years ago". Aha! It's all her falt! Interesting, what did he do in order to be thrown out of the house by the woman who had quit her career years ago in order to dedicate herself to her children and this man?

Anyway... When the children's misery and hatred to their so called stepmom reaches its maximum the wise dad decides that it would be an appropriate moment to propose to Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts, God bless her, can't wait to marry this older man with a bunch of hating children and alimony payments. It's ok that the dad is almost never there and the poor girlfriend has to take care of the brats almost full time (Can't they hire a babysitter?). Note that she is not a gold digger, she herself is a high-paid rising-star photographer. There is nothing in the movie that explains this girl's attraction to this man. Ed Harris, who has an ability as an actor to develop a complex, emotionally intense, charismatic character ( See "The Third Miracle" - a much better movie), did nothing for this role.

Now, there is the mother. She is dying of cancer, but being a proud person she doesn't want her ex and children to know about it. Or may be this is the fear that as soon as the pack of wolves smells her weakness she will be stomped all over. And sure enough, as soon as they accidentally find out about her illness, the children start treating their mother as if she is already dead. This is turning point for them to start looking to accepting Julia Roberts as their next mother. And at this point they find out that she is actually fun. She doesn't listen to "boring" classic music as their mother (a big plus), she is a little bit trashy (definitely a big plus), she is young and healthy (unlike their old and sick scary mother). Most importantly, they don't have to rise to the higher moral standard this family once had.

Ed Harris, give him credit, a "wonderful" man, promises the mother that "she won't go through this (chemotherapy, radiation, death) alone". From this moment, as was said in another review, Ed Harris mysteriously disappears. Except for one "act of kindness" when he bought a Christmas tree for his children that is. Susan Sarandon is devastated by the loss of first her husband, then her children and now she has only a few weeks to live. Apparently she doesn't have any other friends or family except somewhere in CA where she goes to smoke medicinal dope (is this a plug?).
Before that she is mostly by herself in a huge house. The children are with the girlfriend. The ex is busy making money. Her suffering is intolerable.

Remarkably, none of these "wonderful" people feels generous enough to come to her and give this pretty much discarded woman a big hug and say the words that have to be said. There is nothing to fight about anymore: the mother lost and the girlfriend achieved the status of top female in the pack. Ed Harris is missing until the movie's budget ran out and they had to make a final Christmas scene. He suddenly appears in the end and acts so we all hope that his mid-life crisis is over. Julia turns from an annoying moron into a relatively mature individual, the mother forgives everybody, and the children are happy, because though their mother is dying , there will finally be clarity about who is who, and no need to go from one house to another every couple of days. As I said, there is nothing to fight about. The mother will be dead in a few weeks. She lost and she knows this, so she tries to make her children remember her as a nice person.

Julia won (how could she not?). By the way, the children hug their mother finally in the last scene.

Ed Harris is concerned who is going to take care of children when Julia is at work. Luckily Julia is happy to quit her high-paying glamorous job to raise Ed's children.

I wonder if she can have her job back when Ed decides he doesn't love her "that way" any longer?
Susan Sarandon and the boy show good acting, but material is so bad that this movie is a joke.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a let down...
Review: I heard so many good things about this movie, I was totally dissapointed. I absolutely hated the movie. There was basically no plot & the movie dragged on forever. It was just two women fighting the whole time- a total waste of time. I just think of all the productive things I could have done instead of wasting my time watching this letdown movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What's the point?
Review: This plotless film is a waste of time. It's depressing as heck, and way too irritating to be enjoyed. Susan Sarandon's character is such a wretch that it's hard to feel for her even when she gets sick. And don't people get enough of divorce and sickness in real life? Not that realistc films are a waste of time, but they should at least be interesting. Of course, films do not have to feature cloned dinosuars and jedi knights with light sabers to be good. It helps, however, to have a little exponential quality in a film to make it watchable. At least in movies like Stephen King's Cujo, or Thomas Harris's, Silence of the Lambs you get a few thrills and a plot you are not likely to actually experience.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Please, end my suffering...
Review: This is a terrible movie. Not only is the acting quite pathetic, but the entire plot is dull and predictable. This kind of movie has been done a thousaund times, and there are far better versions out there. I felt sorry for those poor kids that had to play in this movie, so I gave it 2 stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: CLUNKER!
Review: I have been wanting to view this movie for quite some time. What a disappointment! The only character that was marginally believable was Sarandon's as a mother battling the fears of losing her children to the trophy wife. The rest of the characters were very uninteresting. I think the screenwriter and director should have done better step-parenting research. It would have done them wonders to log on to any number of newsgroups to get a feel for what real step families go through. The characters in this movie weren't real. I was very disappointed.

The rest of the movie was bland, boring, and frankly, unbelievable. I mean, what mother can afford to take a child out on a twilight horse ride on a moments notice? And where, pray tell, is this fantastic New York suburb Sarandon lived in that afforded her pastoral views of mountains and woods? Did anyone miss the fact the Roberts worked in NYC and was mysteriously able to pick-up the stepkids at their birthday parties and schools in this lush suburb? Sorry, I grew up in that area of the East Coast and I'm still guessing where this suburb is.

Find something better to do with 2 hours. If your really want to watch an excellent movie about the horrors and nuances of divorce see 1982's "Shoot The Moon" with Albert Finney and Diane Keaton. Now that was a good movie.


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