Best movie of this year hands down!

Too much of everything

Let's be realistic.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

As with all of Shirley MacLaine's films the message was well worth the two hours of my life. I recommend it highly.Not one stereotype is left unchallenged and done so subtly one has to stop and really think. Had a really difficult time watching the brutality Bruno and Angela (Stacey Halprin) had to endure from most everyone else in the film, all because they wanted/needed/were seeking to be themselves. What a society of drones we live in. "And it will take a child to lead them..." ..and a black child for that matter. Great movie, may be difficult for sensitive folks but well worth it. Had to watch it in three time periods just to let the distress at the violence subside.

Bruno had two ineffectual parents - an intelligent boy who is out of place except in his own world of spelling. The movie allows the viewer to feel the hurt of the various characters without damning any of them. It shows how adults can be so wrapped up in their own turmoil and battling their inner demons and disappointments that they fail to see just how their children are being affected.Bruno manages to touch your heart on one hand and make you want to shout at the screen characters at the same time.The mother is so over the top that at times you are waiting for the punch line to come, but it doesn't - and you are left wanting to shake her and say get over yourself - look at your son! The father mopes around and turns to a shallow witch who on one hand you can see that he cringes with her behavior but his own pitifully low self-esteem makes him gravitate right back to her - maybe her being so low makes him feel so much better? Anyway, the film will grab you and at times frustrate you but there is an underlying redeeming message - tolerance, recognition of uniqueness.

Well, this looks like a film many people (most?) didn't get. Should have got a lot more credits than it seems to have gotten. Not sure why at all it flunked the critical course. It's quite good and seems to have been Shirley MacLaine's first directing job. So, go see it or rent it. BTW, there is nothing in it of floating in clouds of spirituality over Peru, for those who have worried about that sort of thing over the course of Ms. MacLaine's almost always very distinguished career.The movie is kind of like a home movie done by an extremely talented director and a lot of other talented movie pros: it's not that it's amateurish at all; its rather that it doesn't try for finished Hollywood effects much. Just lets things out, sometimes to play, sometimes not. It's very, very well directed but not in a usual or common or regular sense. Shirley MacLaine may do her best at what you might call encouraging and allowing her actors (including herself) to do "fresh" things onscreen. Sort of like, "OK, go!" Really nice spirit about almost all of the show.And, like most good or better creations, the film doesn't at all go out of its way to explain the story it's showing you. Good. That means it's real hard to put it in a category. Also Good. It's some kind of comedy AND drama, I suppose, but please don't call it a comedy-drama, I think.The young hero, played by Alex Linz, is a quite wonderful "open" part. Again the movie does not try to explain, put words on what "exactly", "precisely" <groan> his motivations are (to win the National Catholic Spelling Bee <really>) while most of the time wearing girl-woman dress, often flamboyant. Kathy Bates as the head of the Catholic grade school he attends is wonderful, too, a quite masculine and tough (and funny) nun who just won't tolerate the boy, for awhile. And there are quite a few nice drop-ins from actors like Jennifer Tilly. Gary Sinese, who I usually think of as a great villain or great sickone, or both, is wonderful as a trying-to-be tough cop who was labelled sissy when he was his hero son's age, not least by his mother, Shirley MacLaine.I liked David Cuminello's script a lot. Got the impression he may not have written all of it???In all, a quite different film that is well worth watching, wherever. Far from run of the mill, as they say.I'm a little afraid to give it the 6 rating I've put on it, but I think I should stop worrying because I am a hard grader. Somewhere between 6 and 7 is I think where it belongs, and where I hope it's getting to on IMDB.

This movie was terrible. The plot was terrible and unbelievable. I cannot recommend this movie. Where did this movie come from? This movie was not funny and wasted the talent of some great actors and actresses including: Gary Sinise, Kathy Bates, Joey Lauren Adams, and Jennifer Tilly.