A personal and quirky drama of hope that things can change thanks to either the changing of minds or a free mind that thinks for itself. Jena Malone plays an independent minded young Southern girl who finds the world around her to hate filled to want to remain in. She has the desire to go off to New York to join a prestigious ballet company, tired of a bible thumping aunt (Christine Lahti), a wheelchair-bound mother who doesn't speak, a racist uncle obviously cheating on Lahti and the bigoted attitude of the townsfolk who could seemingly care less when a young black child is killed in a theater fire. She has befriended a stranger in town (Jeffrey D. Sams) who has shown up to bury his mother, and because he is black, his presence stirs the townsfolk up against him when he stands up against the injustice that the dead boy didn't get when everybody was rescued except him.
There's a rather bohemian dance instructor (Catherine O'Hara) who teaches Malone and a young boy who has dyed his hair to look like Marilyn Monroe, harassed for obvious reasons yet Malone's dearest friend. She begins to learn things about her mother, discovering that the mute woman was a champion for equal rights which has stirred up anger towards her by her brother-in-law.
While this isn't exactly "To Kill a Mockingbird", it makes its own individual points, and the bigots of the town aren't your stereotypical robe wearing vigilantes. Their racism is much more subtle and secret and even more dangerous because it is hidden behind so-called Christian values.
At first, I thought this might be another agenda filled Hollywood film bashing religion, but it is only bashing the hypocrites who use religion as a key to hate. There are a lot of typical cliches of other Southern based dramas in this film, but under the direction of novice Goldie Hawn, it is certainly watchable and very sweet, often funny and making its point in very subtle ways.
This was my second time seeing this, having had the opportunity to get a glimpse of it at the Turner Network Television offices at its private screening before it aired, and the audience then greeted it with cheers for the point it had to make that 25 years later are still important. Hope may not have yet been fulfilled, but hope never dies.
There's a rather bohemian dance instructor (Catherine O'Hara) who teaches Malone and a young boy who has dyed his hair to look like Marilyn Monroe, harassed for obvious reasons yet Malone's dearest friend. She begins to learn things about her mother, discovering that the mute woman was a champion for equal rights which has stirred up anger towards her by her brother-in-law.
While this isn't exactly "To Kill a Mockingbird", it makes its own individual points, and the bigots of the town aren't your stereotypical robe wearing vigilantes. Their racism is much more subtle and secret and even more dangerous because it is hidden behind so-called Christian values.
At first, I thought this might be another agenda filled Hollywood film bashing religion, but it is only bashing the hypocrites who use religion as a key to hate. There are a lot of typical cliches of other Southern based dramas in this film, but under the direction of novice Goldie Hawn, it is certainly watchable and very sweet, often funny and making its point in very subtle ways.
This was my second time seeing this, having had the opportunity to get a glimpse of it at the Turner Network Television offices at its private screening before it aired, and the audience then greeted it with cheers for the point it had to make that 25 years later are still important. Hope may not have yet been fulfilled, but hope never dies.