Masterful Movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

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

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Dot (Camilla Belle) is a deaf mute orphan living with her godparents, the Deers. She's a loner at school, and pushed around by cheerleader Nina Deer (Elisha Cuthbert) and mean girlfriend Michelle Fell. The Deers are hiding some very dark secrets. The mother Olivia Deer (Edie Falco) is hooked on prescription drugs. Dot discovers Paul Deer (Martin Donovan) is sexually sleeping with daughter Nina. Dot is partnered with basketball star Connnor Kennedy (Shawn Ashmore) in class. He becomes intrigued when he sees her playing a piano. Then Nina discovers Dot may actually be able to hear.Dot being deaf or not being deaf is the best concept in this thriller. It's too bad that it's completely ruined by her narration. By itself, the narrations are boring and lame. The worst part is that it takes away from her deafness. The movie needs to play up her deafness, not play it down. She needs to do more signing and fake deaf talking. The mean girls should be trying to fake her out. Nina's discovery should be pushed back a bit. This should have been a big plus but the narration makes it a minor fail. The psycho sexual thriller is part camp and part awkward. Director Jamie Babbit never really nails down the tone. This all starts with the deaf issue. After failing so badly, the rest of the movie struggles to recover. This could have been an interesting thriller but the execution really screws it up.

As a person who had checked ratings for this movie in advance I didn't have high expectations, however I was pleasantly surprised :D.To summarise without giving away too many spoilers, it's about a girl called Dot who's deaf yet still manages to observe so much about the world around her. After some unfortunate events in her childhood she has to go live with her Godparents and their peppy blonde high-school cheering daughter. Pretty normal... It would seem. This movie contains plot twists, and I'm glad to say it wasn't all annoyingly given away in the trailer as a lot of movies are.This was a dark adult film, but I'll assure you it wasn't one of those films that left me dark and depressed afterwards- it really made me think about things. Saying that, I still wouldn't recommend it for those who are too light-hearted Although it wasn't amazing, I would still recommend watching this film to most people if you have some spare time. Well worth your while!

okay, first things first. what grabbed my attention with this movie was of course the actresses.Camilla Belle and Elisha Cuthbert. i wont lie, both gorgeous and attractive. When I seen them in a movie together, yep chuck it on the watchlist, most likely get to it one day.then BAM, wow, didn't expect that, these actresses can actually act. surprised?? YES For some reason this movie touched me in so many ways. Once the movie started, i didn't think much of it. Dot (Camiila) doing her thing and Nina (Elisha) doing what she does best. But yes they grew on me, their characters i felt for. yes i got involved.I'm not going to give away spoilers, but from about 20 minutes into the movie, i found myself looking at the time to see how many minutes are left because i didn't want it to end. both characters had very sad stories, both two different people, both involving their dads.If you are a person who watches a movie, and loves stories, gets involved in it and the characters, you must watch this.the only downside, is that it could have been longer, maybe a scene or two at the beginning of the film where you see Dot and her father, and how he died and so on.Other than that.. Im speechless, wow. haven't gave a 10 in a while. Feels good to be back enjoy people. Great acting great story Great feeling Great rating :)

This one's got me stumped. I hate to think in categorical terms -- it's so lazy -- but either I didn't get the message here or else there's no message to get.Teen-aged Camilla Belle pretends to be a deaf mute and moves in with her godparents, Martin Donovan and Edie Falco. They have a daughter, Elisha Cuthbert, who is a high-school sexpot with long blond hair, a cheerleader to boot. Belle, I gather, has opted for elective mutism because she has been disillusioned and wants to build a protective wall between herself and others. It doesn't work.She discovers that the ordinary family she was looking for is, in fact, all screwed up. Let's see. Dope addiction, incest, fake pregnancies, bitter jealousies, smoking, boozing, unwarranted cruelty, attention deficit disorder, Sturm und Drang, and losing a high-school basketball game -- the usual stuff of daytime dramas.Camilla Belle is not unattractive and one doubts that in real life she needs to be so shy and guarded, but it doesn't help that in this film she mopes around looking dour. Before her first dance at the high school, Elisha Cuthbert chides her for dressing like a janitor. And, earlier, pretending to enhance Belle's appearance, she applies some lipstick and we see what Camilla doesn't immediately see -- that it's smeared all over her lips so she looks like a parody of a whore. Belle's saving grace is that she plays Beethoven once in a while on the piano. The same piano from which she removes a broken wire in order to garrote her godfather.Martin Donovan as the incestuous and jealous father has a face with the appeal of a russet potato and a voice to match. Oh, he's a villain alright, but it's hard not to see why he's been boffing his own daughter. Cuthbert may be forbidden fruit but, after all, she bounces about the house sporting a bosom of considerable authority and she's constantly glamorizing herself, on top of which she's been seducing the whole basketball team and using the f word all over the place. And when her Dad makes love to her, she doesn't seem to particularly mind it. Like many sexual partners, she doesn't seem to care much one way or the other. As she confesses to Belle, she hates it when her father makes love to her -- but she loves it too. As far as we can tell, she never tells her father to get lost. Instead, she claims to be pregnant and milks him out of a thousand dollars in cash.But why go on with the plot when it all adds up to nothing much more than a series of incidents designed to tell us that loving is feigning and friendship mere folly. The movie's not only quiet. It's positively dark.It really IS dark! There must have been at least one scene shot outdoors in sunshine but I don't remember it. The direction is melancholy but efficient. There is only one nod to the cheap slasher movie genre. Cuthbert, ironing the skirt of her cheerleader's uniform, has gulled her dad into coming to her room for a bout of incest. She tells her father than she has a surprise for him and he should close his eyes. Then there are multiple cuts between Dad's placid and uninteresting face and Cuthbert's steaming iron as she lifts it and brings it closer and closer to his face. The viewer waits for poor Donovan to get the kind of surprise that really comes as a surprise when -- suddenly -- they are interrupted by a sound coming from elsewhere. Gosh. And I was waiting with such eagerness to see if ironing Donovan's face would alter it in any way.I don't know what the ending was all about. Here is Dad's garroted body lying on the bedroom floor and Edie Falco as his dissolute wife sitting near it and looking a little gloomy. She finally calls the police and tells them that she did it during an argument. Is she so doped up that she doesn't remember what happened? Is she doing it because she feels guilty about not having protected her daughter? Guilty for something else? Nobody knows and the writers don't seem to care.The final shot has Belle and Cuthbert seated at the piano, with the former teaching the latter how to play Beethoven. Belle's narration tells us that you can't shut other people out because, although you might not be able to deal with them, they always know you're there. It's a new take on an old message. Not only can't you run away from yourself -- you can't run away from others either. Truer words were never spoken.