Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This just in, folks: Women (all, no matter how depraved) are good; men (all, no matter how virtuous) are bad.Meat- eaters bad, vegetarians good.The ONLY reason I didn't rate it one star is the somewhat decent performances by Pfeiffer and Lange.Talk about Hollywood trashing the heartland - as it is so fond of doing.The producers and directors should collectively be hanged. What more does IMDb require to write a review?

Having watched this film years ago, it never faded from my memory. I always thought this was the finest performance by Michelle Pfeiffer that I've seen. But, I am astounded by the number of negative reviews that this film has received. After seeing it once more today, I still think it is powerful, moving and couldn't care less if it is "based loosely on King Lear".I now realize that this is the greatest performance by Jessica Lange that I've ever seen - and she has had accolades for much shallower efforts.A Thousand Acres is complex, human, vibrant and immensely moving, but surely doesn't present either of the primary female leads with any touch of glamour or "sexiness". I don't think this is well received in these times.Perhaps one reason for this film's underwhelming response lies in the fact that the writer (Jane Smiley(, screenplay (Laura Jones), and director (Jocelhyn Moorehouse) are all women. I know that, in my younger days, I wouldn't have read a book written by a woman. I didn't focus on this fact until years later.If you haven't seen this movie or gave it a chance in the past, try watching it anew. Maybe you are ready for it.

Spoilers herein.This is a not incompetent soap opera. And Michelle is uncharacteristically competent. But it is an antiLear -- don't be fooled by the superficial similarity of three daughters and a will.The play has Lear as an innocent pawn of his own vision. The play is about vision and naming, and demons manipulating reality through the audience. It is immensely sophisticated.This drek is merely a play about a bad man. Nothing sophisticated at all.

Given the way the film begins - lots of slow tracking shots of the thousand acres - I expected this to be a dull but worthy effort only brightened by Michelle Pfeiffer (the reason I bought the tape). To an extent this was true - Pfeiffer's character was by far the most interesting. Her anger throughout, although utterly justified, carried an air of self-destruction and manipulation that made the story most watchable. There were points when I wondered if the film was going to miss any tragedian tricks (perhaps I mean soap opera headlines: death, abandonment, loss with no true deliverance, etc), but it was the believability of Pfeiffer and the ugly familiness achieved by the rest of the cast that carried it, showing peaks of humanity through the weight of the film's atmosphere.