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Dying Young

Dying Young

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $13.48
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dying Young
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It is one to watch over and over again. If you are in the mood to laugh and cry at the same time, this is the movie for you.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good movie
Review: I thought the critics' reviews of this movie were very unfair. Granted, it may not be the greatest movie ever made, but it's still a good one. Julia Roberts and Campbell Scott make a great on-screen couple, the story is intriguing, and it will definitely make you appreciate your own health and might even make you realize things you take for granted.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dying Young
Review: I would venture to guess that Julia would love for us to forget this film. The crux of the story: two people fall in love and one is dying is not new and is certainly a sweet, romantic, tear jerker of a plot premise. But, something about the film simply didn't meet its own potential. It wasn't a horrible film, but not one of her best either.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dying Young
Review: If you are a romance buff this is a must have movie.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Do Yourself a Favor...READ THE BOOK!
Review: If you like a good tear-jerker, and this movie wasn't bad, go buy a copy of the book that this movie is based on(same title.)
This really isn't a review, as you can already see, but simply a suggestion to those who appreciate a good love story and a damned good cry!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Touching and romantic
Review: Initially I was a little disappointed that the story didn't go deep enough, but as time goes on, I find myself feeling very fond of the movie.

Hillary O'Neil (Julia Roberts) needs a job and a place to live, and so interviews for a live-in position taking care of a sick person in the ultra-wealthy neighborhood of Nob Hill in San Francisco. The job calls for some nursing skills, which she doesn't have. She flunks the interview. However, the young man who is sick, Victor Geddes (Campbell Scott), is secretly watching the interview. He overrides the interviewer and hires her. The job pays $400.00 a week, plus room and meals, which for Hillary is the good life.

Victor, Geddes Hillary learns, is a Phd. student in art history who has completed everything but his thesis. His thesis is about two, or several, German impressionists. He shows Hillary slides of their paintings. The artists were obsessed with the women they were painting. One of the artists, Clint, has a number of paintings of a thin woman with big, flaming red hair.

The connection between Hillary and the red head in Clint's paintings wasn't pulled off very well. We still feel like Victor hired Hillary mostly for her looks, independent of anything else. It still comes off more as a coincidence than one of the reasons he hired her.

Hillary comes from a background where she worked in Diners, parties in clubs and discos and sleeps with construction workers. Victor comes from a background that included butlers, personal assistants, never learning to drive because his family employed a full-time driver. The two have a lot to learn from each other.

She doesn't know what she got herself in for. Victor has Leukemia. One of Hillary's jobs is to accompany him to chemotherapy treatments at the hospital and take care of him afterwards. Hillary has quite a strong reaction to just seeing the rest of the patients, large in number, at the chemotherapy ward in the hospital. It's a normal, human reaction. I don't blame her. I would react the same.

Hillary is the type of person, who, when the going got too tough, always packed her bags and left. She was without a place to live because she had walked in on her live-in guy, in bed with another woman. So Hillary packed her bags and left. After returning home from the hospital, Hillary has a temper tantrum, because she can't deal with it, and packs her bags. Luckily she didn't leave.

We see scene after scene after scene of Victor suffering the after-effects of chemotherapy. The impact of chemo, as show in the movie, can't be underestimated. No wonder when people speak of chemo they tend to do it in the same hushed tones as the big "C" itself.

In any movie with a young good-looking female and male lead, we viewers expect, or hope, they fall in love. This aspect, I feel was handled well, somewhat realistically. Hillary is ambiguous throughout. They become close; they become friends, but any normal woman would hold back from falling in love with someone in Victor's shape. Nothing in the movie was suggestive of gold digging, except for a remark by Hillary's mother, and that's to be expected.

Victor intentions are much less ambiguous than Hillary's. He just doesn't spell out what they are, early on. In the latter part of the movie, Victor lies to Hillary and tells her he no longer needs chemo and takes Hillary to a vacation house in the country. The truth is, Victor has renounced any more chemotherapy, and what he wants to do in the country is to try and live normally for a time before he dies. You can't blame him.

Victor's life has been cold and isolated. He tells Hillary early on that his father, a lawyer, is in Japan on business while suffers through chemotherapy. When Victor first hires Hillary, she subtly and insinuatingly manages to probe if Victor has hired her with the intention of sleeping with her. Victor bluntly replies that there have been other women in the house before. What Victor is looking for is love and intimacy.

My hope for Hillary's character is that the experience will help her to put her own problems in better perspective. Can't deal with seeing the chemo ward? Try having leukemia yourself. Hillary can always pack her bags and leave. Victor cannot. My hope for the viewer is that s/he comes away with a respect for the life of the dying.

Julia Roberts' and Campbell Scott's roles were balanced, but the film focuses more on the drama surrounding Hillary rather than Campbell Scott. Although looking at the problems associated with being the caretaker for someone dying of cancer is a legitimate one, the person with the cancer has the bigger problem. Campbell Scott should have been the lead role. His was the far more dramatic viewpoint.

Hillary O'Neil was a more sober role for Julia Roberts than her usual movies, although the personal side of Hillary was similar to the Pretty Woman and Erin Brockavich roles. This is what viewers have come to expect of her. I find that one of Julia Robert's most interesting strengths as an actress and a woman is that she is capable of turning on hundreds of different facial expressions showing all sorts of nuanced feelings, attitudes, shades of emotions, colors and facets. This story was a perfect vehicle to exploit that talent, but we see little of it.

What is disappointing is that given the material and the cast, the producers, director and screen writers should been able to create a much more powerful movie.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: average love story
Review: it's romantic and sad but i didn't even feel like crying until the very end. you don't get very invested in the movie, because there is a lack of really good material, i think. campbell scott seems like an intense actor and did well in this role, but julia roberts' character left me confused. overall, it's very watchable, but it's not some beautiful, sentimental love story that will send you running for the kleenex.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Heart-stopping
Review: Julia Roberts played an excellent part in this unforgettable film, which touched many parts of our hearts that had never been touched before. The setting is one that will stay in my mind forever, the classical seaside summer home with the tall grass blowing from the light breeze.

This film must be viewed by everyone that is feeling as if they have nothing to live for, it will change your outlook on life and turn you in a much simpler direction that will lead to happiness instead of thoughts about Dying Young.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: No award winning performances but worth watching.
Review: Not a bad movie but extremely watchable.Julia does a good turn as a surrogate nurse to a wealthy leukemia sufferer. The one snag is the title,which probably put people of.It did me anyway until I caught it by accident. Alternate title could be "I want to live". Yeah I know,the Susan Hayward flick. Pity miss Roberts didnt go on to better things.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Probably Julia's best.
Review: Okay, I'm not any kind of Julia Roberts fan. I think she comes off as pompous and self-centered in all her movies...with the exception of this one.She plays a girl named Hilary, a bright, intelligent girl who is trapped in a world of limited funds and virtually no career advancement. She deserves better, but she's not likely to find it in her dead-end, working-class milieu. Salt in the wounds is added by her insensitive mother who compares her unfavorably to her, Hilary's, peers and by an unfaithful boyfriend. Seeking a way out, she answers a help-wanted ad for a nurse/companion to a critically ill young man. She fudges the interview and is promptly dismissed. Her pride wounded, she bolts down the sidewalk street of the affluent San Francisco neighorhood only to be called back by the ubiquitous butler, Malachy, who informs her that the job is hers. Turns out that Victor, the critically ill young man, was surreptitiously observing her during the interview and has chosen her over many much more qualified candidates.The pay and fringe benefits are a dream come true for Hilary, who promptly moves into Victor's mansion as his live-in nurse/companion. When he isn't busy showing her slides of Klimpt's work and debriefing her on Art History 101, he is either going for chemo in the hospital or throwing up at home. We suddenly don't envy Hilary, as she more than earns her pay and keep in these trying duties. Victor and Hilary are from different worlds: he turns her on to Klimpt; she turns him on to the local bar scene. Each learns from the other. And Hilary, the impoverished girl from the other side of the tracks, gives Victor the one thing that all his money can't buy him: the joy of life and the desire to live. I deducted a star because it was unclear whether or not Victor would live at the end of the movie. It was gratifying that they fell in love.


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