I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The story was good and I feel they tried to do it justice but the acting was poor. The little girl was terrible. Being a born and bred Southerner the fake accents made me cringe but that doesn't stop me from watching Southern themed movies. This just lacked everything: good acting, good directing and emotion equal to the plot. The only redeeming quality is that there is nothing offensive in the move other than the typical violence of Civil War action and it was not particularly graphic-- no bad language, no sex scenes nor nudity. I would love to see this story done by good actors and maybe better directing. I don't recommend it unless you are bored to death and need something to pass 98 minutes of your time.

I can usually find the good in most movies, and enjoy most movies - but this one really stinks! Sorry, finally found a movie to watch BECAUSE it's so bad. For starters, the acting is bad. Really bad. Super cheesy 'southern' accents,, flat deliveries. I don't think they did more than one take for any scene. Other than the two stars, i'm pretty sure they got locals to do the other speaking parts. And not well at all. The film work, is okay, but looks like it was shot on a video camera or something. The locations are terrible. I'm pretty sure the entire movie was shot on someone's farm. Looks nothing like a 'southern' style setting at all. No sets other than the house and most of the outdoor stuff is shot on a single country road - no town, no other buildings. The worst parts is the special effects. Two scenes in particular. One scene near the end shows a long column of marching soldiers. This is obviously a shot from another film , super imposed over a field. You can see the shot cut out with difference in the grass and sky. Horrible. The other shot is a dark swirling sky imposed over a field. And yet at the top of the tree line you can see bright blue sky where they couldn't mask the digital impression. Makeup was terrible. Very cheap. The only good thing was the costumes. Christina Ricci's dresses were very well done as were the soldiers uniforms, although I suspect the re-enactment guys brought their own uniforms. Except Tom Berringer's hat wasn't even a military hat. Looked like an old fedora they found in someone's grandfather's closet! Another thing that bugged me was the set. The women lives in what appears to be a very large farm house with huge rooms.. Yet when it is burned to the ground, there is no heaps of charred rubble like there should be. It's just a tiny basement and 1/8 size of the house layered in straw..and obviously fake stones as a foundation. I don't know what they spent the budget on,, but his seriously looks like it was produced by college film students.

This movie is so slow! Dialogue is stiff as well as actors movements. The guy with one leg was the best actor of them all. Tom Beringer must have needed some quick cash to do this movie and even his performance was below par. and Christina Ricci, . .. couldn't tell she is a professional actor if judging by her acting skills in this movie. Civil War period costumes were okay but make up and false mustaches were so laughable. That's when I knew we were in trouble but we did struggle thru the entire movie. At the conclusion, we couldn't figure out if it was a high end collegiate play or a made for TV movie. And the magic stars, what was that all about? Bottom line: Don't waste 100 minutes of your life on this stinker.

This boring uneventful film I have to say I left the TV after watching it for about a half hour. My husband was dozing in the chair so I don't know if he actually "watched it" He likes civil war films but he was sorry to have had to pay the rent price on this one. I thought the acting was horrible and appeared child like more like a play one would see at school on a stage. Never heard of the actors or actresses either RED FLAG on that one. Do some research on films before you rent them. This is a boring and long and disastrous movie. I would not recommend anyone to watch it. It is going back to the video rental store as one of the worst movies I have ever rented.