Dreadfully Boring

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Had this been made in the old days it would have been firmly labelled a 'woman's picture' and possibly rated as a one, two, three or even four handkerchief weepie. Although someone old-fashioned in content it does benefit from excellent performances from the thee leads and whilst it's true that Sigourney Weaver gets the lion's share both emotion and emoting-wise both David Staithairn and Julianne Moore both support and match her. The story has married couple Stathairn and Weaver opting out of urban life for the joys of the country, which tend to sour a little when Weaver, working as a nurse in a local school, ruffles a few feathers and winds up in the slammer on a morals charge. This would be bad enough at any time but it comes right on top of Moore's daughter drowning whilst in the care of Weaver. You can take it from there yourselves so suffice it to say it's a fine example of the genre.

At the heart of Scott Elliot's drab, soapy screen version of Jane Hamilton's novel is a terrific performance by Sigourney Weaver as a woman accused of child abuse. She is a school nurse who hates her job, is unhappy in her marriage and in whose care her best friend's daughter drowns. Jail is a kind of redemption. The film ought to shake you up, but Elliot imbues it with a kind of cold, clinical detachment. It's like a blueprint for emotion and, while Weaver is very powerful, the material never touches you. As the friend whose daughter dies, Julianne Moore touches a few nerves and David Strathairn is very fine as Weaver's dull, uncomprehending, caring husband. But they are all acting in a vacuum. You don't care what happens to anybody.

There are movies which are absorbing just because there are actors who are able to transcend an academic directing :Sigourney Weaver is part of them ,and she gets fine support from the whole cast (with the eventual exceptions of the two lawyers ,two cardboard characters,and some of the jail inmates)."Crime and punishment" would be another apt title for "map" :that's the book the heroine claims (along with Laura Ingalls Wilder's "little house",a return to childhood's kingdom,"Walnut Grove" being another world like the one she drew on her map) when she's in jail.Sigourney Weaver portrays a woman with a strong guilty feeling because of two events in her life (one minor with a pupil,another one,quite tragic).When she's unfairly charged with abuse,she accepts the punishment.When she's in jail,she's beaming,and nobody really understands her.More,she still thinks it's not enough (the self-inflicted wounds are revealing).It takes all Weaver's talent to make this complex character credible .Moore's evolution makes sense as well.She too feels guilty and her behavior does not shock."Map" tells a story which concerns us all: Its core is responsibility. Recommended.

Set in Southern Wisconsin, the accents in this movie were so stereotypically Hollywood's idea of the way people in the mid west speak- the flattened vowels held just a little too long. I grew up in the Milwaukee area and these accents sounded false to my ears. I'm surprised cheese and beer didn't play larger parts in the plot (though there were cows).