One True Thing

Rating:
Summary: Merle Streep ¿ she really can¿t turn in a poor performance
Review: Based on the novel by the same name by Anna Quindlen, One True Thing is about family relationships, especially that of the daughter (Renee Zellweger) with her parents. She's left home to establish herself as a promising young writer, but duty pulls her home (actually, unwilling/unable to do it himself, her father commands her to put her life on hold, come home, and care for her mother) to care for her mother (Streep) who is dying of cancer. William Hurt plays the father well; he seems to excel in playing roles of men who are distant and/or unavailable. What drives this story is anger and resentment and duty - and love. There's a twist, the possibility that someone (perhaps Mom herself) slipped Mom a fatal teaspoon of morphine, but you know? It was never conclusively proved or disproved, and it really didn't matter.
Very, very good movie.

Rating:
Summary: One True Thing is a one true movie!
Review: Since I became very interested in Renee Zellweger, I had decided to rent this, and I thought it was such a beuatiful movie. After learning that her mother has cancer, Ellen (Zellweger) is asked by her father (William Hurt) to come back home to care for her. At first, she refuses, but finds the strength to do go home, and in the process begins to have a more loving relationship with her mother that she never really had before. I had never watched many of Meryl Streeps movies before, but just watching her playout this character who is indeed suffering a great deal made me totally upset, and like Ellen you wish so much to want to help her even if you can't. However, when I think more of it, it really is better to have loved than to have lost. And in a very beautiful way, both Ellen and her mother found that bond which will always be with them. I wish I could review more, but in a way as I write this, I am feeling a little emotional over it. There really are no other words. Except one love: love. I guess less is more.

Rating:
Summary: Good movie
Review: This was a really nice dramatic movie which Meryl Streep truly shines in. The movie also stars Renee Zellweger and William Hurt. Zellweger plays a workaholic who lives in New York, and goes home to visit her family for her father's (Hurt) birthday. She learns that her mother (Streep) has cancer and her father asks her to move home to take care of him, thus leaving her career, life and boyfriend behind in New York. Zellweger plays a cold character who is distant from her family, but she has to hold it together for all of them. She soon learns how much her mother does day to day, and finds herself growing with resentment towards her father who takes no part in helping or caring for his wife. He also has affairs and is emotionally distant from the family. The movie focuses mainly on the women, so you find yourself relating to them more than the father. The movie was well done and Streep stole the performance as the dying mother, nothing short of excellent work as usual. My only complaint is the way the scenes are put together. The movie starts in 1988 where Zellweger's character is talking to a lawyer, and then you watch the past and see the story interjected between these scenes, which cuts between the drama and is not very effective in my opinion. Also, in the end when the mother dies from drug overdose, the daughter believes her father did it, and vice versa. It was not explained very well or even exposed that the mother was the one who did it, it just seemed to sneak in right at the end. Overall a good movie though.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful and Interesting Family Drama!
Review: It seems less and less frequently that we get to see a superbly assembled cast of actors united in a story that tells itself in terms of its human interest, level of drama, and opportunity to learn something from the characters about the nature of life, relationships, and ultimately about ourselves. This movie offers such an opportunity. All of the cast memebers, but especially Meryl Streep and William Hurt, do an outstanding job in presenting this tale of a family in crisis, and the hidden secrets, weaknesses and strengths of its members and their enduring bonds to each other. The photography is well done, and the sound is excellent as well.

This is a worthwhile and serious movie, involving some interesting intellectual issues about how the needs of a family of strong but loving individuals and quite strong and needy personalities clash and interact with each other over an increasingly critical stage of terminal illness for the matriarchal mother of this modern American family. Overall, then, I recommend this as an absorbing examination of an intellectual family with a range of family issues such as rilvary, and a number of hidden dimensions to the relationships within the family itself. It is painful to watch each of them struggle to deal with a member's decline and death due to cancer. One of the increasingly rare worthwhile movie experiences, and one well worth owning.

Rating:
Summary: Please read the book
Review: Although the acting is very fine, this movie does an injustice to the book. The book is the story of Ellen's developing awareness, and is told very subtly. Before her mother's illness, Ellen had been seeing the world through her father's eyes. In the process of bonding with her mother, she develops a much deeper view of herself, her parents, their life as a family, and of how she intends to live. The movie comes close to reducing this complex story to a morality tale espousing the beauty of traditional feminine virtues, and makes what should be a subtle story a nearly black and white one. The problem is not that the movie differs from the book; it's that the movie fundamentally distorts the book's meaning.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing! Meryl Streep soars!
Review: One True Thing based on the bestselling novel tells the story of a hard working & determined mother who has fallen ill with cancer (Meryl Streep). The plot is based around the discoveries her daughter makes (Renee Zellweger) about her family, and realizes that the world her family lived in so many years ago was not as happy as it seemed. The daughter has clearly favored her father over her mother for as long as she could remember, and never treated her mother fairly or appriciated anything she did for her. Zellweger's character discovers the dark secrets of her fathers sexual affairs and his massive drinking problems, and at the end of her mother's life realizes just how badly her father had treated her. The movie is very well done (unfortunatley it was greatly overlooked). The movie is ultimatley depressing, but tells an extreamly powerful story and effective in its delivery.

Rating:
Summary: It's Not The Brady Bunch
Review: If you want your next family flick to be sugar coated and ideal, skip this marvel of a film. If you want to pay attention to subtle dialouge details, be enthralled with rich, textural cinematography and possibly weep at moments so close to your heart, it hurts, actually hurts, add "One True Thing" to your video collection.

This film adaptation of Anna Quindlen's book may be considered a "chick flick"--and those viewers may cluck all they like. But once in a while, I like to be moved, deeply moved. And this cast does that: William Hurt, Meryl Streep, and Reneee Zellweger (of Jerry Maguire fame), encircle a plot like campers tending a continuous fire. Each doing their part to kindle, fan, and eventually stare into dying embers.

One of my favorite scenes of this "daughter comes home to take care of dying mother, realizing her perfect father has faults of his own" drama, is when William Hurt reaches for Meryl Streep's fragile hand, a rare reassurance of his love, and ever so slowly swirls her to Bette Midler's rendition of "Do You Wanna Dance".

I watched this film with yearning. Craving chances not taken with issues regarding my own mother. She did not die of cancer--she died of her own hand by pills, in my arms. I best stop here. Got tissues?

A grand film for thoughtful provocation.

Thank you for your interest & comments--CDS

Rating:
Summary: It Goes Where Most Aren't Willing...
Review: The first time I watched this film it was the 3rd movie we were watching in a marathon. I promised myself I would let myself fall asleep...and with the slow beginning I thought I was well on my way to dreamland. HOWEVER,something about the movie kept my attention, and by the end I was astounded by new revelations.

I watched this film again recently, and again I was amazed at all that this movie accomplishes in a very understated way. At a time when I personally feel frustrated at all the preachiness I see going on in literature and movies, I am a champion of this masterpiece. This film engaged me, brought me through a rich journey, and left me as a changed person...all without telling me what I should take away from the film.

For a little more background, the storyline is as follows: an up-and-coming NYC journalist (Zellweger) goes home to celebrate her father's birthday in a small town. She despises the vulgar simplicity of the town, her mother, the costume party, etc. However, she absolutely idolizes her father, who is a well-known English professor at a nearby university.

However, while she is at home, her beloved father coerces her to put her budding career on hold so she can take care of her mother (Streep), who she learns is battling cancer. Zellweger's character is openly angered & offended by this request...which is just the beginning of script filled with a refreshingly honest look at our ugly, selfish & occassionally brilliant emotions in such situations.

In coming to stay with her mother, Zellweger continues to despise the ignoble life of women's meetings, town decorating, baking, etc. that she is forced to join. Up to this point in the movie, everything is as you might predict or expect in the storyline. However, where the movie goes from here is absolutely phenomenal. As this daughter lives in her mom's world and begins to understand her mother's very understated, unacademic life, she is opened to whole new worlds of humanity. At the same time, as her opinion of her mother rises, her opinion of her father comes into question. As the movie explores this whole dynamic, more twists come and this daughter is overwhelmed by the complexity of relationships & adult life. No one is right. No one is wrong. Nothing is simple, and everyone struggles as he fights his own demons.

At the very end, this movie shows (not preaches but shows) an absolutely breath-taking portrayal of love well after the rose-tinted glasses have come off. I don't want to give anything away, but it's when Streep wraps her arms around her husband after his late night out. After being barraged with so many images of Hollywood love, the daughter (and the audience) is speechless at a protrayal of deep, full, rich love that has grown in the face of so much pain & struggle of life.

This might admittedly be more of a girl's movie than a guy's. One of my guy friends only stayed awake because of the DA interrogation of the daughter interspersed throughout the film. However, many, many of my girlfriends who hate chick flicks were as pierced by this movie as I was. (Many of them have also dismissed their mother's maternal role in their lives and have idolized their fathers.)

I simply can't express in words how wonderful and paniful and majestic this piece is. And it's so refreshing because it goes where so many films aren't willing to go - to the stuff of our true, everyday lives & situations that aren't glamorous but are filled with ugly emotions, pride, and underestimations of others.

Rating:
Summary: Very unusual but.....
Review: Normally when I read a book AND see a movie taken from it, I prefer the book to the movie (if I liked either one) In the case of One True Thing-- I preferred the movie because the book text was constantly reminding you what an acheiver Ellen Gulden was which I thought to be a tad uneccessary. I found myself thinking "I GET the point already, come on!" In the movie version, Ellen is also smart and successful, but this is shown to us without hitting us over the head with it.

Rating:
Summary: A Overlooked film.
Review: this is a great movie, i thought that the actig was oscar worthy esspecially Meryl Streeps performace, she receaved a well deserved oscar nomination for her role i this film. renee Zellweger also does a good job, playing a cold daughter. William Hurt is also equally wonderful as a distant and remote father, Husand. One of my favorite films.