If one can put up with these cliches, and with Marcia Gay Harden’s overacting, there are some nice compensations here, including most of the other performances and the location shooting...

Original in some ways but the same old plate of fried green tomatoes in others, this Sundance Festival favorite might rate wider acclaim for its two leads if the overall tone weren't so bloodless and even dreary.

It's an unabashedly manipulative, melodramatic tearjerker with plot twists that Horatio Alger would have been embarrassed to use, and the fact that it's so well acted only confuses the issue.

It's really quite good and Ellen Burstyn is great