Truly Dreadful Film

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Prince of them tides. Prints off hem sides. Hints of slides. This is a movie that people made. People are tall lumbering things what keep their guts inside and they cry when they are sad. Sad people. Barbra Streisand produced and directed, and I know the critics just love the sh*t out of this f*cking movie so that's a real feather in her cap. A local radio station 98.9 The Rock, is having a contest, if you know the plot of this movie, The Prints Of Thigheds, be the first caller and tell Johnny Dare or The Moppet. You will win an all season pass to Schlitterbaun!!!! Kansas City's premier water park! All employees of 98.9 The Rock and their families are ineligible to win.

First of all, the movie is a Barbara Streisand vehicle and little more. She completely misses the point of the book and may as well glide around without her feet touching the ground. Love the woman, but her interpretation of the novel falls to ego.I've read the novel repeatedly and it tells a story of family tragedy intermixed with repeated tales of heroics that nourish the soul. Barbara's version takes away most of the message, avoids the subject and meaning of the novel, and merely sets up pretty stage "Sometimes a Great Notion," by Ken Kesey. Superb book that far exceeds his "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest." That one misses the point by having the main character focus on the female lead, a kind of "claim the woman" ending. Nolte's ending utterance, "Lowenstein, Lowenstein," has the same impact. Neither the book nor the movie are about possessing a woman, or about a meaningful affair with someone. If men are going to be defined by their relationship with women it will be as tragic as the woman as property attitude men express.After seeing the movie and reading the novel repeatedly, I chose Hunting Island, SC for a Fall vacation. As you drive across SC there is a fall point, a descent from the uplands of the western half, down to sea level. You smell the salt marshes before you see them. When you begin driving through them you recognize how accurately they were captured in the story. I remember my heart racing as we entered salt marsh county and the movie's setting came alive all around us. If you leave your car and walk the boardwalks through the marsh you come to realize that this is the heart of life on earth. The fecundity of the marshes, washed by the ocean during high tide, helps you understand the primordial ooze that nurtured our ancient ascent from minuscule sea creature to hominid. See the movie, visit the marshes.

This is one of those few movies which does not take you to a climax, but leaves you completely and purely satisfied.. The movie flows like a river, quiet, serene.. but never permitting you to forget its turbulent agitated sources..The movie shows many facets of unhappiness.. almost every character in the movie is unhappy..Tom, Sally, Lila, Savannah,Susan, Jason and even the very successful Herbert..Each one of them knows that he or she is unhappy, but does not know how to be happy.. It happens to most of us and that is what is appealing about the movie..Nick Nolte is absolutely amazing as the unhappy 'Southerener' who does not cry over personal tragedies.. Performances of Blythe Danner and Kate Nelligan as Sallie and Lila respectively are commendable..The movie certainly deserved better Oscar treatment..

Spanish moss dripping from the branches of the live oak trees, dark and brooding tide pools of brackish water, love and hate intermingled, deep, abiding secrets shared and forgotten, Tom Wingo (name like unto Tom Wingfield of "The Glass Menagerie"), quintessential Southern boy/man. Brother Luke and sister Savannah, a mother named Lila, a brutal father, Henry. Terror and shame intertwining to paralyze and shock, murder covered over like South Carolina soil covered over the bodies, psyches being explored, wrung out, hung out to dry, love healing as it crucifies. Christ repeatedly crucified, but the only mention of his name is a curse. Symbolism abounding: violin vs. football, Southern life vs. Northern life, Jewish mother, Southern mother, children playing, laughing, crying, hurting, adults playing, laughing, crying, hurting. Oh, God, where were YOU in all of this?