Starring: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear, Radha Mitchell
Studio: MGM
Video: Anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 widescreen, color
Audio: English DD 5.1, DTS 5.1
Subtitles: English, Spanish
Extras: Featurette – Summary of the story thru the different characters
Length: 102 minutes
Rating: ****
Living in Portland was my main motivation for seeing and reviewing this film. The word was that it not only showed our city in a more glamorous light than most previous films made here have, but also that it was overall a better film than some others shot here. Both observations turned out to be true, but it’s not perfect. The title is most accurate – the main subject here is the emotion of love itself and the wild ways it can affect our lives.
Director Robert Benton brought together a group of people who are all interconnected in various ways – mainly thru their friendships with father confessor Morgan Freeman, who has stepped down slightly from his previous role as God to become the all-seeing narrator of the stories, who observes the shifting relationships going on which the other characters seem to miss. A college professor on a seemingly endless sabbatical, his pain involves the death the previous year of his drug-addicted son. Though all the actors are excellent, the scenes with Freeman and Jane Alexander playing his wife are among the best in the film.
It’s interesting how this can be such a warm, fuzzy (though sad) movie – a great date movie – and yet be filled with lots of naked bodies engaged in several varieties of sexuality. Everything is treated in a gentle and tender manner, and considerably empathy is developed for most of the characters, but there are few surprises in the turns of the at times soap-operaish/Robert Altman-style plot.
– John Sunier
