..the bloodhounds snapping at her rear end".
The above line was spoken by the great Thelma Ritter in "All About Eve" but she could have been talking about Novalee Nation in this movie.
It does not start out on an optimistic note for Novalee, as she is heavily pregnant but still abandoned by her loser boyfriend, and you never find out why he left. The movie would have you believe a kind librarian dove through a plate glass window at Wal Mart (where Novalee takes up residency after Mr. Wrong skips out...but for six weeks!!) in order to deliver her baby. Maybe George Lucas directed that sequence...because of the birth of her daughter on Aisle 4, Novalee becomes a celebrity and the darling of Wal Mart. Hard to swallow, no?
Anyway, after a very episodic start, which also includes Novalee's trashy Mother dumping on her too, the movie calms down a little and becomes somewhat bearable.
The subplot involving Mr. Wrong becoming a singer is hard to take, but it does introduce Joan Cusack to the movie, and she's like a breath of fresh air, even though she is seen very briefly.
Judd is very good as a woman who can't seem to stop having children, Stockard Channing is also good as a kind woman who befriends Novalee, and Keith David is a photographer who also becomes a friend.
The problem is not the acting, the problem is everything else.
The above line was spoken by the great Thelma Ritter in "All About Eve" but she could have been talking about Novalee Nation in this movie.
It does not start out on an optimistic note for Novalee, as she is heavily pregnant but still abandoned by her loser boyfriend, and you never find out why he left. The movie would have you believe a kind librarian dove through a plate glass window at Wal Mart (where Novalee takes up residency after Mr. Wrong skips out...but for six weeks!!) in order to deliver her baby. Maybe George Lucas directed that sequence...because of the birth of her daughter on Aisle 4, Novalee becomes a celebrity and the darling of Wal Mart. Hard to swallow, no?
Anyway, after a very episodic start, which also includes Novalee's trashy Mother dumping on her too, the movie calms down a little and becomes somewhat bearable.
The subplot involving Mr. Wrong becoming a singer is hard to take, but it does introduce Joan Cusack to the movie, and she's like a breath of fresh air, even though she is seen very briefly.
Judd is very good as a woman who can't seem to stop having children, Stockard Channing is also good as a kind woman who befriends Novalee, and Keith David is a photographer who also becomes a friend.
The problem is not the acting, the problem is everything else.