Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's 1986. Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his young daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) live in blissful isolation on a former island commune off the east coast. They defend ferociously the local wetland against land developer neighbor Marty Rance (Beau Bridges). He invites Kathleen (Catherine Keener) to live with them and she brings along her sons, Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano). Rose is immediately jealous and tries unsuccessfully to seduce Rodney. Red Berry (Jena Malone) arrives bringing candy for Rodney and sex for Thaddius.The opening act confused me with a seemingly disturbing Jack and Rose relationship. It doesn't help that Rose acts like a jealous lover. It turns into an interesting sexual coming-of-age story for Rose as she tries to seduce the new men in her life. Then the last act leaves Jack and Rose back as a weird awkward couple. It's slightly off-putting. The whole movie is filled with interesting performers and slightly off-putting. It's not fulfilling but it does have some interesting bits and pieces.

The Ballad of jack and Rose follows the story of an isolated father and daughter searching to define their relationship.Jack is a father who has raised his daughter on a former hippie commune located on a small island. They have very little contact with anyone else except for an occasional friend or two. Jack discovers he is dieing and also comes to the realization that he and his daughter need aid in their current life, him because of his health and his daughter Rose in learning to deal with life with out him. Jack visits the main land and invites Kathleen and her two sons to live with them to aid in these things.Roses quickly feels threatened by Kathleen and proceeds to behave in disturbing and unhealthy ways to show her protest. Rose makes a pass at Kathleen's oldest son who turns her down, she keeps a copperhead to use to scare Kathleen, fires a gun into Jack and Kathleen's room, and eventually loses her virginity to Kathleen's youngest son, just to name a few. Eventually Roses actions lead to her being assaulted by Kathleen's youngest son in front of Jack causing a fight between Jack and the boy in which Jack gets beat due to his poor health. Rose comes to defend jack pushing the boy out a window injuring him badly. Kathleen has enough and leaves Jack and Rose alone.As Jack nears death he and Rose share a strange moment in which they have a sensual kiss prompting Jack to cry out for forgiveness. Jack soon dies but not before he makes Rose promise to live. Rose burns down their house and leaves for whatever.This film is sad and horrible romancing for poor parenting and a disturbing girl. Jack is an obvious failure as a father preferring to be a friend or even flirt with his daughter instead of a parent. In fact Jack's actions are selfish and possessive preventing his daughter from growing into a health individual. His realization that Rose may have issues comes to little to late condemning her to a life of self seeking destruction as we see in the film.The true sadness of this film is not in the place the writer obviously wants it to be but in the fact that the writer actually seems to think there is some sort of romantic quality to the horrid parenting of Jack which creates a disturbed teenager with no visible means of creating a healthy future for her.I have been working with teens for nearly ten years now and I have seen how the selfishness of parents in attempts to keep their kids to themselves can create many problems for those teens. Jack is not a loving parent who has a unique relationship with his daughter, he is a man who's selfish desire to isolate himself and his daughter damages her as a person. I have seen it many times and Roses future is not something free or romantic but one in which she will be an easy target for exploitation thanks to her father.This film is a how not to with regards to raising kids.

The Ballad of Jack & Rose A compelling look @ a father and daughter on an island commune-Daniel day Lewis shares his own island refuge with his 13 year old daughter- they live off the land - it is idyllic,peaceful,perfect- but Jack is getting sick and he needs help.It is hard for me to be objective about this film- since I was snagged from Suburbia by my parents and subjected to farm life for most of my formative years.They did a good job capturing the good and bad parts of living off the land.But of course all things must have act 2 conflicts-Beau Bridges is an evil developer building cookie-cutter dwellings(It is frustrating how generic housing is now) and Katherine Keener is sort of hired to be a surrogate mom for Rose- the experiment yields drama.This is a well told and acted flick and will probably hit home for other granola generation offspring like myself. B+

You won't get any spoilers here, I didn't hang around long enough to know how it ended. An hour was more than enough.A lot has already been said in these reviews about heavy-handed symbolism, staccato dialogue, lack of subtlety, etc, and also Day-Lewis's brave attempt to salvage something from it, so I won't rehash those.However, I wish to mention something that REALLY irritated me, and that was the camera work. A lot of it was in close-up, and they presumably used a hand-held camera. This led to such a jerky picture that at times I felt vague motion sickness. I've seen home movies done better.