Nell

Rating:
Summary: Different And Great
Review: Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, and Natasha Richardson star in the drama "Nell". The screenplay was wonderfully written. They take the audience into another world, which may seem unusual to many. Exploring a language and a lifestyle lived by only one person, everything stays heartfelt. That touch is never lost for a single second. Such feelings intensify as the courts try to take this life away from Nell. Everything said and done keeps the audience watching closely. Jodie Foster, who also produced, was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her role as Nell. Every drop of energy poured onto the character. This gives the movie the added emotion. Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson wonderfully play their roles as doctors protecting Nell from the hospital and the press. Their roles intensify greatly as Nell begins changing their lives forever. The great creativity of "Nell" makes this experience unforgettable. This is great viewing for all audiences.

Rating:
Summary: Moving acting far makes up for improbable tale
Review: Jody Foster couldn't act poorly if she was forced to at gun point... her role as a troubled girl living by herself in the woods is stellar. In spite of the isolation this girl grew up in and her messed up language due having her mother (a stroke victim) as her only companion growing up, the character of Nell is almost a bit too normal. It's a proven fact that people kept in isolation suffer mental breakdowns, become depressed and sometimes violent... that is why "solitary confinement" is such a harsh punishment in jail.

The antagonists, Redneck hillbillies and narrow-minded "know-it-all" psychiatrists, are a bit too stereotypical and expected.

Every once in a while you hear f a "jungle boy" or other isolated child or young adult found in the woods somewhere that has survived beyond all odds, foraging for food, tending their own wounds and living w/o interaction w/other people... but never do these people survive in mainstream culture in just a couple of years of being in an institution.

Nonetheless, I found this film very entertaining and very moving due to the flawless acting by Neeson and Foster. Unless you're more cynical than I am, it's hard not to enjoy this film and just dismiss the obvious improbabiliites in this film. Definitely worth seeing for the moving acting by Foster.

Rating:
Summary: Move over Meryl --- Here's Jody!
Review: Jody Foster has emerged as the most capable serious actor, rivaling even Miss Meryl Streep. With "Nell" Jody Foster gives another powerful performance with her portrayal of a mute woman raised by a handicapped mother, cut off from any human contact. Discovered after the mother's death, a sympathetic doctor, played by "Shindler's List" Liam Neeson, unlocks the secret of this "wild woman" and re-integrates her into society. -- This film was quite moving. My only frustration is that the nice doctor had no problem whatsoever to decypher Nell's unintelligable 'special language'...instantly! That's a bit far fetched.

Rating:
Summary: Nahl haf gik derto
Review: Maka sertu quino. Nell non himpler bevasitin no fo me in weseng inta loooooooooo. Nell ac-min-hotay. Me Nell! nong foil ronnto beeeeeeeeeeee!! Me Nelllllllll.

Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: Nell could have done with some revamping before they shot it. I did not need the endless nude shots of Foster and Neeson on the rocks. I did not need the final speech of Nell's, which with some editing could have been much more believable.

Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson have amazing chemistry (not surprising, considering that they are married) and Jodie Foster was totally convincing as Nell. Imagine the difficulty of learning "Nellish" for this movie! *wink*

Sadly, the next to last scene in the courtroom betrays knowledge and worldly wisdom that Nell simply does not possess. But it is more than made up for by the beautiful landscape, the misty flashbacks of Nell and her twin sister May, and watching Neeson tear up.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully cliche; unintentionally hilarious
Review: Nell is a clunky drama about two psychologists (Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson) who study and befriend a young woman Nell (Jodie Foster) at her lakeside log cabin. A product of potentially disturbing family circumstance that this film promptly glosses over, Nell speaks her own language and was raised basically without civilization. Of course, Nell proves to everyone in a bombastic climactic courtroom scene that she is in fact more civilized than so-called modern society when she explains (in "Nellish" that is) how modern man and woman don't look each other in the eye, talk too much, and possibly every other unoriginal complaint about contemporary society. Yet, it all seems a bit absurd since Nell is clearly a product of modern society- she's compliant, fun-loving, and can even play matchmaker! When she hooks up doctors Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson, the movie officially becomes about Neeson and Richardson gettin-it-awwwn and loses any facade of insight into the human condition. Sure, psychology may tell us that pure uncivilized human nature can be scary, violent, sexual and basically id-centric but Nell has wild hair and a propensity to scream! And what could be more complex and revealing of her inner nature than that? Time and time again, Nell comes across like a domesticated pet- one that desperately needs to be put down.

Rating:
Summary: Oh Nelly!
Review: Nell is an earnest and slightly soporific drama about a doctor's inadvertant discovery of a wild child in the remote hills of North Carolina. Jerry Lovell (Liam Neeson), a rural MD is dispatched to confirm the death of a hermit-like mountain lady and is quick to discover a cantankerous, violent, and unintelligible young woman, obviously the old woman's unacknowledged daughter,hiding in the cabin rafters. Lovell is immediately captivated by Nell (Jodie Foster) and is soon joined by career-climbing psychologist Paula Olsen (Natasha Richardson) in attempting to decode the mysterious woman's gibberish-filled rages. Before you can say "Wapner at 5:30," this hillbilly rain woman's past becomes brutally clear: her mother, a victim of rape in her youth, had given birth to the child but kept her a secret from the the world for thirty years; Nell has been taught that men and daylight are harmful, and her language is the product of imitation after her mother's stroke.

The sentiment here is laid on thick. Nell is harrassed by those stereotypical movie rejects, scientists and red necks. The scientists want her brought in for study; the red necks want to play a little doctor (Can you say Deliverance?) There are a number of nice scenes portraying the bonding between the three leads, and the direction by the talented Michael Apted is sensitive and well-intentioned, but Nell suffers by asking us to shed too many unearned tears. In this regard, most damaging is the lack of key exposition. We never really get to know Nell. Her mystery, while at first quite interesting, loses its novelty by the time they take the wide-eyed country girl to the big bad city.

The biggest roadblock has to be Jodie Foster. Her pagan-like emoting as she dances naked through the woods is two stations short of hamville. It's like she wants us to believe so desperately in Nell's tragic story that she has to use a few neon signs to show us the way. Thanks, but I think we can handle it ourselves. Neeson is more effective, and he and real-life wife Richardson do a nice job of counterbalancing Foster's excess in the role of Nell's surrogate ma and pa.

Rating:
Summary: iba dibba dabba
Review: ogah babba diddy dibby boosly wadda we!
umma googa?

unless you want to listen to 90 minutes of "dialog" like that avoid this movie

Rating:
Summary: Maybe the movie was about us
Review: Oh, so many Nell's there are in this world, living their various aspects of childhood; and oh, how desperately we want to change them - for their own good, of course. Even those who actually are living in the years we label as childhood suffer from our drive to get them out of it. The eleven year-old who would play with dolls, or would rather paint than study math, or would do a Nell's dance at a family get-together - all feel our need to make them grow up, to be interested in important endeavors like, maybe, school achievement, team sports, life goals, and, naturally, repressing impulsive behaviors (you might check out the character of twelve year-old Elsie in "Fairy Tale: A True Story". Now, as then, she would be expected to put away childish things).

As to the movie, I don't think it's a spoiler to say I think the high point of the movie wasn't the courtroom scene. I think the story turned on the moment Paula (Natasha Richardson) found solace in Nell's hands, when Nell was no longer a subject, but a needed co-human.

I thought "Nell" was a well produced, directed, and acted movie. Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson and the rest of the cast were outstanding. Of special note, I think Nick Searce, as the sheriff, gave his character real depth in a beautifully nuanced and layered performance.

See this movie. The child hiding inside you will love it.

Rating:
Summary: OSCAR-CRAVING "WILD CHILD" IN A LOG CABIN
Review: One would expect more from Michael Apted than this award hopeful because thematically it's hard not to notice its glaring overlaps with Wild Child or The Elephant Man, its narrative following a tediously hackneyed routine --

Civilization discovers Outsider (in our case, a Tarzan-like girl born and brought up in the idyllic North Carolina wilderness); Outsider cannot communicate, speaks in a baroque forest tongue instead; Outsider is taunted, tested, taken advantage of, yet somehow becomes a media sensation and eventually teaches us Grave Important Things.

Woven into this predictable tapestry are some choice inanities.

The two physicians --

(1) A country doctor (Liam Neeson) conveniently oblivious to life's necessities like paying bills, and
(2) An institutionally-funded but vacuous shrink (Natasha Richardson) intent on furthering her career by examining Nell through two-way mirrors

-- find themselves transformed by the girl's gump-like innocence, realizing in the process the emptiness of their own lives. They need companionship. They need be one with nature. Why not swim in the lake nude under the evening stars, and while you're at it, why not show Nell her first glimpse of male genitalia so she'll no longer be scared of men?

Soon, it becomes clear that Nell is ironically the sanest of the three. When they step out of their contended cove into the civilized world (read: a small redneck town) the movie sinks into the labored and sappy. An unbelievable scene toward the end even has Nell defending herself in the courtroom, despite her linguistic stupor through the rest of the film.

In all fairness, Jodie Foster is borderline convincing in the bravura title role, and Neeson has his moments. It is these spurts of good acting that help camouflage the narrative's weaknesses somewhat, relying copiously on Spinotti's ravishing cinematography to fill in some logical lapses with rose-colored morning mountains and silvered moonlit lakes.

Yet, ultimately, I found myself asking the question, "Haven't I seen this all before?", the answer to which was a disappointing, resounding yes.